


The Raccoon City Incident

by Q_Alias



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Cheating, Complete, F/M, Game: Resident Evil 2, Game: Resident Evil 3 Nemesis, No Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:20:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 62,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21702847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Q_Alias/pseuds/Q_Alias
Summary: Grayson Harman, the son of Scott Harman, the Ashford's butler, distances himself from the Ashfords, and the painful reminders of Alexia's death. He moves to Raccoon City with the hope of starting over, becomes involved in a complicated affair with Annette Birkin, and transitions from a job as a bouncer and bartender in a local dive to a career as a beat cop in the Raccoon City Police Department. But an outbreak, instigated by the Umbrella Corporation, sweeps across Raccoon City, and the life he'd just started to rebuild falls apart.
Relationships: Annette Birkin/Original Character, Annette Birkin/William Birkin, Jill valentine/original character, Leon S. Kennedy/Ada Wong
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	1. It's Complicated

Grayson wasn't really sure when the affair had begun; it had started with friendly drinks at Jack's Bar, and had ended in the bed of his one-bedroom apartment.

They never really talked about it either, the affair. It was just something that happened over and over again, a routine of drinks and fucking. And it was easier that way—to just let it happen. If they didn't talk about it, they didn't need to justify themselves. They didn't need to discuss how William or Jill might feel if they ever found out, or how weird it must be to Sherry that her mom spent so much time with a guy who wasn't her dad.

He sat up in bed and looked over at Annette. She was a pretty restless sleeper; she'd tossed the blanket off herself at some point, the lines of her scapulae tense and knitted together.

Remembering what she'd told him, Grayson leaned over and whispered, "You told me to wake you when I got up."

Annette stirred, then suddenly shot upright and asked, "What time is it?" Dark circles were under her eyes.

Grayson looked over at the digital clock on his bedside table. 5:45pm winked back at him. "5:45," he told her. "You should go back to sleep. You need it. These little cat-naps aren't gonna cut it, Annette."

Annette, naked, started gathering her clothes and underwear. "I have to get back to the lab," she said, shimmying into her jeans, and then slipping her T-shirt over her head. "William's going to be pissed. We—"

"Are in the middle of some important research and can't fuck it up," Grayson said, because she'd said it so many times before. He grabbed her cellphone from the bedside table and handed it to her. It was one of those new fancy fold-out ones with a display screen, and had, she'd confessed, cost her about a grand.

"Thank you," she said, and shoved the phone into the pocket of her lab coat. Her ID was still clipped to the lapel. Once Annette double-checked she'd gotten everything, she looked at him and sighed. "Look, I'm sorry," she said, and pecked him on the lips. "It's only for a little while, Grayson. I'll make it up to you, I promise."

"Don't worry about it," he said, and shook his head. Then, "Remember, Sherry's birthday is—"

"Oh, shit," Annette said. "I forgot. I was just so busy—"

"It's fine," Grayson said. "I bought her something and put your name on it."

"You shouldn't have to do—thank you. I'll get her a card and put some money in it, or something."

"Sure."

"Don't look at me like that, Grayson."

"I'm not looking at you like anything, Annette."

"You're looking at me like I'm a terrible mother. Look—"

"You're a busy woman, I get it," he said. "Relax."

Annette snagged her keys from the bedside table. The Mr. Raccoon key-chain Sherry had bought her was attached to the ring. "When do you start at the Raccoon City Police Department?"

"Next week," he reminded her, for the thousandth time. "My FTO's a guy named Marvin Branagh. Hear he's a damn good cop."

"Think I saw a newspaper article about him," Annette remarked, the keys jangling in her fingers as she walked toward his door. She looked at him. "Wish you luck. I'm sure it'll be fine."

Grayson was still pretty nervous about starting at the police department. His only work experience had been as the Ashford's butler, and as a bouncer and bartender at The Black Room. He should have been transitioning into some kind of hospitality career, or maybe using that Columbia degree Alfred had paid for to write for the New York Times or something; but he'd chosen to become a cop instead. Mostly because Jill and Clancy had talked him into it—and the pay wasn't too bad either.

He'd also be able to transition into a career with the Umbrella Security Force with some law enforcement experience under his belt. And with a connection like Alfred Ashford, who was the company's paramilitary director, he'd pretty much be guaranteed the position.

"Yeah, I'm sure it will," Grayson said, and smiled. "Just First Day Jitters, you know?"

"I was like that when I started at Umbrella," Annette said, opening his door and stepping halfway through it. "Parents owned a ranch in Montana, and there I was, fresh out of college and working for one of the largest pharmaceutical companies on the planet."

"Country girl in the Big City," Grayson teased.

"Classic story," Annette said, and grinned. "Anyway, I need to go. I'll see you later, Grayson." She left.

"Yeah, see you," Grayson said, and waved to nobody. His phone rang. He didn't even need to check the caller ID to know it was Jill; he'd been avoiding her for the past week. Inhaling slowly, and then exhaling, he took the handset from the cradle and listened.

"Why haven't you been answering your goddamn phone?" Jill asked. Grayson heard her dog Charlie barking in the background. "I was starting to worry something happened."

"Nah, I'm fine," he said, and stared out the window opposite him. Twilight had settled over Raccoon City, the sky a deep indigo velvet streaked with pink-gold clouds. The lights of the Raccoon City Radio tower blinked in the distance. "I've just been busy. Carl's not happy I'm leaving the bar."

"Who cares how Carl feels. This career change is a good thing, Grayson. You're not gonna get anywhere working some dead-end job at a rock dive."

"A rock dive you frequented," Grayson pointed out.

"That's not the point. I frequent Tony's Kitchen too, but it doesn't mean I wanna make pizza. Point is, you're not gonna get anywhere there."

"Yeah, I hear you, Jill."

"Do you really?"

"Yeah. I do."

She sighed. "I'm glad you're okay." Charlie was really close to the phone now; Grayson could hear him sniffing the receiver. Jill gently urged the dog away, then said, "I was calling to see if you wanted to go somewhere. No bars, though. I have to go into work early tomorrow. Coffee sound good?"

"Yeah, sounds fine. Where at?"

"Raccoon Park. There's this cafe near there. We could go for a walk afterward, maybe up by St. Michael's."

"Sure. Meet you there in an hour, Jill."

"Okay. See you then." She hung up.

Grayson dressed, then walked to Raccoon Park; it was close enough to his apartment that he could see St. Michael's clock-tower from his window. It was a pretty warm and breezy night. A couple of teenagers were skateboarding, blasting some kind of brassy music from a portable stereo; Grayson recognized the song as _The Impression That I Get_. Jill was watching them do tricks, dressed in a blue shirt and dark jeans, and a white leather windbreaker.

She had two foam cups of coffee in her hands, and passed him one. "Figured we'd just skip to the walk," Jill said, smiling with white teeth. Her eyes were light blue, a slight epicanthic suggestion to them, framed by dark brown hair she'd cut short around her jaw.

He sipped his coffee and walked with her, away from the skaters and their loud music. "How's life?"

"Better, now that I know you're still breathing."

"Sorry."

"It's fine, Grayson. You're nervous about the job. I get it."

"Yeah. Guess I'm just wondering if I'm cut out for it."

"You passed all the exams, and you're in great shape. You'll do fine. You ever see Chief Irons?"

Grayson chuckled. "Point taken."

"Maybe after you've gotten some experience, you could try out for S.T.A.R.S," Jill said, and smirked at him. Her eyes were rimmed with smoky black eyeliner. "Test is coming up in a few months. Put the work in now, then who knows? I could put a good word in with Captain Wesker."

"We don't really get along," Grayson reminded her. Wesker had found out about Annette, and had threatened to tell William about the affair if Grayson didn't keep his mouth shut. They had history. Grayson had known Wesker when he'd worked as a researcher for Umbrella. He also knew, although not the specifics, that Wesker was doing something shady with S.T.A.R.S.

"He's not so bad once you get to know him," Jill said, and sipped her coffee.

Grayson frowned. "Yeah. Not so bad," he lied.

They arrived at St. Michael's. It was a popular tourist destination, and had been built by some eccentric railroad tycoon; but Grayson didn't know much else about it. He'd never even gone inside; he'd convinced himself that, because it was a tourist attraction, it wasn't really worth visiting. Tourists had a way of cheapening a place, Grayson had long ago decided. They turned historic sites like St. Michael's into mass-produced commodities—into T-shirts, key-chains, postcards, cheap snow-globes that middle-aged retirees could display on their shelves and mantles.

"We should check it out one of these days," Jill said.

"No thanks," Grayson said, and stared at a sign that displayed operational hours, and informed the public that they also offered guided tours and weddings. "Who the fuck gets married at St. Michael's Clocktower?"

"A lot of people," Jill said. "This place generates some serious revenue."

Grayson shook his head and finished his coffee.

"Anyway," Jill said, and they started to walk again, "you should definitely consider joining S.T.A.R.S, Grayson. Take the fucking test."

"Not sure if I could stand sharing an office with Vickers," he grunted, and tossed his empty cup into a trashcan. "Or Speyer. That hick accent and mullet of his annoys the fuck out of me."

"Forest isn't a bad guy. Vickers? Well, yeah. I'd have to agree with you."

"If I have to share an office with Vickers, Jill, I'm gonna wind up punching him again. Promise."

"I don't doubt it. He kinda deserved it, the last time we were all at The Blackjack."

"Little shit has a big mouth for someone who can't back it up."

Jill stopped walking and looked at him. He stopped too, heard the _plink-plink-plink_ of moths against the bulb of a nearby streetlamp. "You sure you're okay?" she asked suddenly. "I don't know. You've seemed pretty distant lately."

"I've just had a lot on my plate," Grayson said, and slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He shrugged. "It's nothing, Jill. Just a lot of bullshit."

"If you need help, you know I'm there for you, Grayson."

"I know. It's fine, Jill. I got it under control."

She kissed him. "I'm worried. That's all."

"I'm all right. Promise."


	2. Welcome, Rookie!

Next week came quickly, like he'd blinked and it was suddenly Sunday night.

He'd decided to call Alfred, mostly to discuss his interest in the Umbrella Security Force, and to get an idea of what sort of things Umbrella wanted in a candidate for the position. And he'd rather hear it from the Chief of Paramilitary himself than some secretary in HR.

The phone droned in his ear, then connected him to Alfred's unlisted extension.

"Alfred Ashford speaking," said Alfred, his voice fuzzy from modulation. His accent was pretty typical of a rich British guy.

"Hey, buddy. It's Grayson."

"Grayson! Wonderful to hear from you. Have you finally decided to return to Rockfort?"

"Not yet," Grayson said, and shook his head. "Actually had some questions."

"Questions? How quaint."

"Yeah," he said. "About the USS. What kinda qualifications does Umbrella want for that position?"

Alfred started laughing. Trill, effeminate laughter. "Are you serious? No, of course you're not. You? In the USS?" His laughter started winding down, and when Grayson didn't laugh with him, Alfred said, seriously, "You're serious. You want to join the USS."

"I'm not asking for kicks, Alfred. Yeah, I'm thinking about it."

"You're a butler, Grayson. Not a soldier."

"Maybe I'm tired of just being a butler, Alfred. I joined the Raccoon City Police Department."

Silence, but Grayson could hear Alfred breathing. He was listening.

"I might even join S.T.A.R.S."

"You can't just abandon your post, Grayson," Alfred said. "You're my butler. My friend."

"I'm still your friend, Alfred. That hasn't changed."

Alfred sighed, then said, "If you're honestly serious about this, then I suppose I can help. There's a silver-lining here. If you join the USS, I can give you captaincy over one of the units on Rockfort. Maybe Raval's. He's been pissing me off lately. If he wasn't so good at his bloody job, I'd have shot him by now."

"Rodrigo, right?"

"Yes, that greasy-haired sp—"

"Alfred."

"You'd asked what Umbrella's looking for in a candidate for the USS?" Grayson heard him shuffling papers. "Minimum of a bachelor's degree in Chemistry, Biology, or other related sciences," Alfred began, "at least six years of military or law enforcement experience. You'll be required to complete several certifications for handling and retrieving bio-hazardous materials—but needn't worry, Umbrella provides the training."

"Jesus Christ," Grayson remarked. "Are you making it sound harder because you don't want me to do it?"

"No, Grayson. These are the general requirements. But I could make an exception for you, provided you complete the training on Rockfort."

"Shucks, Alfred. You're too good to me."

"I said, 'provided you complete the training on Rockfort', Grayson."

"I can do it."

"We'll see, I suppose." Grayson heard Alfred sip something. "I suggest you focus on the RPD, however, before worrying about the USS. I'm still extremely disappointed you're not returning to Rockfort, but I have a soft spot for you, and as such, foolishly entertain your whims."

"I'll visit soon, I promise. How's dad?"

"He's… Scott's doing all right," Alfred said.

"Not so good, huh?"

"No. He isn't."

Grayson frowned. "Right. Tell him I'll call him later, when he's feeling better."

"I'll have him ring you when he's feeling up to it," Alfred said. "I need to go, however. Did you have any other questions before I retire for the night?"

"One," Grayson said, wondering if he should even bring it up. "The Birkins. Do you know what they're up to in NEST?"

"Hardly," Alfred said. "Research isn't my area, Grayson. They don't tell me anything about the labs." He paused, then asked, "Why?"

"Just wondering," Grayson said. "That's all, honestly."

"My suggestion is to leave the Birkins to their own silly devices, Grayson. Better for everyone involved, I'm sure."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Night, Alfred—wait, one more question."

"What is it?" Alfred yawned.

"Wesker. What's he up to?"

"I have no idea," Alfred said, and he sipped whatever he was drinking again. Probably whiskey, Grayson decided; Alfred always had a nightcap. "He transferred to the intelligence division some years ago, and that particular area of the company isn't under my purview."

"Right. Thanks. That's all I wanted to ask."

"We'll chat later," Alfred said, and hung up.

Grayson put the phone on the cradle and stood, stretching. He walked over to his open window, feeling a nice breeze on his skin, watching the lights of the radio tower. His street was one of the quieter neighborhoods. Nobody out right now. Just an old guy walking his two Great Danes, and a young guy on roller-blades. A black sedan sped past his building, blaring hip-hop music, jouncing noisily over a speed-bump. Then it was quiet again.

Sleep hit him pretty suddenly. He turned and wandered back to his bed, face-planting on his freshly laundered pillows. Could still smell the faint traces of Annette's sea-breeze shampoo.

Grayson looked at his bedside table, staring at a picture of Alexia, the only one he kept in the open. He'd taken it in Antarctica, in her laboratory. She was thirteen-years-old and smiling in the faded Polaroid, dressed in a lab-coat that was too big for her, and a black jumper dress.

"Fifteen years now?" he murmured. He buried his face in the pillows and dreamed of beaches.

His alarm went off at five o'clock in the morning. Grayson showered, styled his hair, dressed in his uniform. The uniform was uncomfortably stiff and tight from newness.

He brewed some coffee and poured it into his thermos, then headed to his car. It took him twenty minutes to drive to the Raccoon City Police Department.

The department used to be a museum, which was pretty evident in its architecture; it sat somewhere between Neo-Greek and Art Deco, with a pinch of Gothic Cathedral thrown into the mix. It looked, Grayson decided, like something that belonged in Gotham City.

He drove into the parking garage behind and under the precinct, parked, and headed into the building. To reach the lobby from here, Grayson had to pass the shooting range—he could hear people firing guns—and follow the hall past the morgue, through an open shutter-gate.

The lobby was huge. With its beige marble floors and dark wood accents, it looked like something that had once been a museum, and dredged up confused childhood memories of the Philadelphia Art Museum, and his father talking about Rocky. A statue of a woman, worked in white marble, dominated the center of the lobby. Grayson figured the sculpture represented Lady Justice, but the cops just called it The Goddess statue, a leftover from the station's museum days.

Grayson approached the front desk, where a bored-looking cop scribbled something on piece of fax paper.

"Hey, my name's Grayson Harman. I'm looking for Marvin Branagh?"

The cop looked at him. "Oh right," he said, and grinned. "You're the rookie they just hired." He pointed his pen toward a door. "West office. You'll find him in there."

"Thanks," Grayson said, and walked to the west office.

Several desks occupied the west office. Officers leafed through reports, scribbled things on pieces of paper, picked through folders and binders in the aluminum filing cabinets. They didn't pay him any mind as he walked through the bullpen. Grayson felt out of place, a little overwhelmed. All the cops in here looked seasoned, and here he was, a rookie with a mild case of the nervous shakes.

A tall black guy approached him. His beard was neatly trimmed, his hair closely shaved. He stared at Grayson with intense brown eyes, his mouth a hard line. The brass bar on his collar ranked him as Lieutenant.

"Rookie," the guy said, and grinned. Grayson saw his nameplate: Marvin Branagh. He extended his hand, and Grayson shook it. "Marvin Branagh. I'm your FTO, boot."

"Nice to meet you, sir."

"Same. You got your procedure manual?"

Grayson showed him. "Right here, sir."

"Good. Better than most rookies we get," he said, and closed the folder he'd been carrying, tucking it under a thin brown arm. "We're heading out on patrol. Gonna start workin' on that radio-ear of yours, among other things. C'mon."

His first day was surprisingly eventful. They'd stopped a couple of speeders, answered a domestic disturbance, hauled a junkie out of the bathroom of a Speedy Burger. He'd also learned the art of writing a good report—succinct and clear enough that it accurately described the incidents, but didn't give attorneys any ammunition if things went to court.

Near the end of their shift, almost six o'clock in the evening, but Grayson didn't mind the long hours; he'd pulled longer shifts while working for Alfred. Marvin quizzed him a few times on protocol as they drove back to the precinct, and to his FTO's delight, Grayson had managed to answer his questions without looking much at his procedure manual.

They parked the car in the garage. Marvin walked beside him. "You got your notebook, right?"

Grayson nodded. "And the manual."

"Don't lose either of those things. Gonna save your ass, boot."

"I hear you, Lieutenant."

"So you from around here, rookie? Don't sound it."

Grayson shook his head. "Not really from anywhere. Family was originally from New Jersey, but we moved around a lot. I lived in England for a few years."

"Yeah? Never picked up the accent?"

"Nah. My dad's employers took a certain amused pride in the fact that we, according to them, sound like we're from New York." Grayson paused, adding, "My dad's a butler by profession, see."

Marvin laughed. "Butler? Really?" He looked at him. "Sorry, just kinda funny. You don't really imagine anyone bein' a butler, you know? It's like… I dunno. Like someone who makes wagon wheels, or some shit."

"It's a pretty niche profession, I guess."

They walked past the shooting range, past the morgue, through the open shutter-gate. Back in the lobby, Marvin said, "I gotta finish some things. Good work today, rookie. Keep it up. I'll see ya tomorrow."

"Sure. See you, Lieutenant."

"Before I go," Marvin said, and smirked. "I gotta know somethin', boot. I ain't one to really involve myself in folks' personal lives, but you're datin' Jill Valentine, right?"

"Yeah."

"Woman's a firecracker," Marvin said. "Damn good cop, though. Sorry, rookie. Word just travels fast around here, you know?" He pointed at him. "That's another thing you gotta remember, boot. Your personal life? Keep a tight lid on it. Unless you want everyone and the damn Chief to know 'bout it."

"Got it, sir."

"And one other thing," Marvin added. "Don't bug Sergeant Phillips with dumb questions. Woman's got enough on her plate. You got anything you need to ask, talk to your seniors. Got it?"

"Got it."

Marvin winked, then disappeared into the west office.

Grayson started toward the door. A new cop sat at the front-desk now, watching something on a portable television.

Someone grabbed his arm suddenly, and said, "Grayson. How'd it go?" Jill beamed. She wore her S.T.A.R.S uniform: a blue-gray waffle-knit T-shirt, dark blue fatigues, and tactical boots.

"It went well. I like Marvin. He's a cool guy."

"Marvin's a great guy," Jill agreed, and started leading him somewhere.

"Where are we going?"

"S.T.A.R.S office. I need to grab my things. Heading home. You want to come over for dinner?" She looked at him. "I mean, it's leftovers, but it's good. You like croquettes, right?"

The S.T.A.R.S office was really out of the way, near the laundry room and showers. Barry Burton's desk had a bunch of gun parts and packages from Kendo's Gun Shop on it; Jill's had a picture of Charlie, and several knickknacks her cousins had brought her from Japan on their last visit to Raccoon; Chris's desk had his leather jacket, his guitar, and a bunch of alt-rock CDs spread out on it.

Jill grabbed her coat from the backrest of her chair. Brad Vickers stared at him from the communications station, frowning; his eye was still somewhat swollen from when Grayson had punched him at The Blackjack.

"What's he doing here, Jill?" Brad asked bitterly.

"Good question, Vickers," Grayson said, and looked at Jill.

"I'm just grabbing my things, Brad. Grayson's not gonna be here long."

"He's afraid you're gonna punch him again," Forest said, from his desk. He was sitting down, his chair tipped against the wall, boots on his desk. They were cowboy boots, the toes sheathed in steel. "You scared, Chickenboy?"

"Fuck off, Forest," Brad said, and turned around in his chair, staring at the monitors. He made a small adjustment to his headset.

"Bawk, bawk, bawk, bawk-a!" Forest said, flapping his arms like a chicken. He laughed.

"Hey, leave him alone, man." Joseph was at his desk, practicing the vanishing quarter trick; but he couldn't get it right. "Dammit. The book makes it seem so fucking easy."

Grayson felt someone staring at him. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder, and saw Wesker watching him from the doorway of his office. His office was partitioned off from the S.T.A.R.S bullpen, in a room of frosted glass windows. A brass placard with his name was mounted on the door.

"All right. Think I got everything," Jill said, and paused. She looked over at Forest. "Where's Chris and Barry?"

"Where else? Shootin' range, gorgeous," he said, and finger-gunned in her direction. "Was gonna go down myself in a spell. Just wanted to hang around and hassle Chickenboy some first."

"Fuck off," Brad snapped.

Jill nodded. "No surprise." She slipped on her coat, heading toward the door. "Come on, Grayson. I got everything."

Grayson nodded and started to follow—but Wesker suddenly grabbed his shoulder and yanked him inside his office, locking the door. "Soundproofed," Wesker said, and rapped his knuckles on the frosted glass. Then he sat down at his desk. He was dressed in his S.T.A.R.S uniform: a set of dark blue fatigues, and a tactical vest. His eyes, like always, were screened by sunglasses. "Congratulations on surviving your first day on the force, Harman. Who'd have thought the Ashford's butler would become a cop?"

"Yeah, who'd have thought." Grayson gestured around them, at the shelves of dusty trophies and awards, of books and binders, and photographs and newspaper clippings of S.T.A.R.S. "Why am I in here?" 

"Relax," Wesker said, and took out a half-full bottle of scotch and two glasses from his desk. "Here," he said, and poured him a drink, sliding the glass across the desk. "Take the edge off."

Grayson took the glass and stared at it.

"It's not poison," Wesker said, and sipped his scotch.

He sipped it. It wasn't poison.

"I just wanted to make sure we were still on the same page." The sunglasses were so dark that they gave the impression of the orbital sockets in a skull.

"I'm not gonna say anything, Wesker."

"Good. I'd hate to tell William that his wife's sleeping with Alexia Ashford's former boy-toy," he remarked, and smiled in that mimetic way only Wesker was capable of, like he'd learned to smile from a technical manual.

"My personal life's none of your business, Wesker. I get it, okay? We're strangers. I don't know you. Never met you in my life."

Wesker nursed his scotch for a very long time. "Just a bit strange, I suppose," he said, finally. He leaned back in his chair, the thing squeaking on its pivot. "But perhaps not. You seem to have a thing for blonde scientists."

"Don't go there, Wesker. I'm serious."

"Or what?" Wesker set his glass down, smiling. He leaned forward, his chair creaking loudly. Clasped his hands on the desk. "I have you by the balls, Harman."

Grayson opened his mouth, then closed it. He put his glass down.

"Exactly." Wesker stood. He wasn't as tall as Grayson, but he had a certain presence that made everything feel as if it got smaller around him, more insubstantial. "What's your interest in Annette Birkin? I'm genuinely curious."

"You're genuinely curious about her research, asshole. And before you ask, no, I don't know anything about it."

"I believe you, Harman." He watched him, his expression unsettling in its neutrality, in the emptiness of the sham orbital sockets.

"Yeah, I'm sure."

Wesker grabbed Grayson's arm and steered him toward the door. "I'll see you around, I'm sure." He unlocked the door and nudged him through, then shut it behind him. Grayson heard the lock.

"What the hell was that about?" Jill asked. She'd volunteered to be Joseph's guinea pig, who was, presently, practicing the coin-in-ear trick on her.

"Nothing," Grayson lied. "Captain Wesker was just welcoming me to the job."


	3. It's Not Something You Just Do

Someone knocked at his door. Glancing at his clock, it was twenty past midnight, which meant something had happened at the precinct and they needed him, or it was Jill or Annette—and hopefully not together.

He opened the door. Annette stood there in the hallway of his apartment building, wringing her hands. She still wore her lab-coat, a faint chemical tang on her clothes. "Grayson," she said awkwardly. She looked absolutely exhausted. "I'm sorry to just show up like this. I know it's late."

"Something wrong?" he asked, and stepped aside, shutting the door behind her.

She kissed him. "I just wanted to see you. To get away from the lab."

"William?" he asked, and walked with her to the living room. He gestured to the open pizza box on his coffee-table. "Got some cold pizza, if you're hungry. Can throw it in the oven for a couple of minutes, if you want."

"No, no. I'm fine," Annette said, and sat on his couch, covering her face with her hands. "Just tired," she added, her voice muffled. He noticed she wasn't wearing her wedding ring.

Grayson sat beside her. "You want something to drink?"

"No, really. I'm okay—you know what, maybe a water."

"Sure, hold on," he said, and went into his kitchen, retrieving a bottled water from the fridge. Came back and passed it to her. "You sure you're fine? Sherry okay?"

"Sherry's fine," Annette said, and unscrewed the cap from the bottle, chugging half of it. When she'd finished, she said, "William's gonna be at the lab all night. It's just been non-stop fighting with him, so I needed a break."

"Research that intense, huh?"

"You have no idea," Annette muttered, and looked at him. "I'm sorry. I show up here at this time of night, and all I'm doing is bitching about work. How was your first day?"

"Not bad." Grayson sat down again, itched his ankle. "Couple of speeding stops, a domestic disturbance, and we pulled some tweaker outta the parking lot of a Speedy Burger."

"Drugs are getting pretty bad in Raccoon City," Annette said, and ran her fingers through her ponytail. "Crime in general."

"Why S.T.A.R.S happened," Grayson remarked, and scratched the back of his neck. He never really talked about S.T.A.R.S; the conversation almost always drifted to Jill. It wasn't because of jealousy that it drifted to Jill either; Annette wasn't a jealous person. She seemed curious, more than anything; she knew he didn't love Jill.

"How's, uh, Jill?"

"She's fine."

Annette nodded. "It won't be like this forever," she told him, as she'd told him several times before. "I just—I need some time, you know? William, he's—"

"An asshole. I know."

"He can be," Annette said, and shrugged. Then, "We both can." She produced a pack of Virginia Slims from the pocket of her lab coat and fished out a cigarette.

"I thought you quit."

"I did," Annette said, and paused. "You mind if I smoke?"

"Nah," Grayson said, and shook his head. He opened the sliding door to his tiny balcony. "Just smoke it out here. We can talk."

She nodded and stepped out onto the balcony, lighting the cigarette with a disposable BIC. "What did you want to talk about?" she asked, and blew a cloud of smoke, watching the city lights.

"About William."

Annette sighed. "Are we on this again?"

"Yeah, we are," he said, watching her. "When are you gonna break the news? Serve those divorce papers?"

"Grayson, it's not something someone just _does_ ," Annette remarked, blowing another cloud of smoke. "I could ask the same about Jill—sorry. I'm not trying to fight with you too."

"Nah, you're right," Grayson said, running a hand back through his hair.

Annette finished her smoke and flicked the butt over the railing. Grayson watched the cherry streak toward the ground, exploding on the pavement in bright orange embers. "Complicated it most definitely is," she muttered, massaging her forehead. "But I promise, I'm gonna do it. I just—"

"Need time. I get it," Grayson said, and nodded. "I love you, Annette. Guess I'm just impatient." He smiled sheepishly. He'd never been very good with feelings; his father had been the old-fashioned type, the sort who insisted that men needed to be cold and statuesque.

"Grayson, you know when you say that I—"

"Feel awkward, I know. It's fine. Sorry."

"No, it's fine," Annette said, ghosting a smile. "I love you too. I know I don't say it much."

"Don't worry about it."

"When I do serve those papers—when the time's right, I mean—have you decided how you'll tell Jill?"

"Yeah," he said. "I'm just gonna tell her."

"Just like that?"

"Jill's a disguise," Grayson remarked.

"Honestly, outside of work, William's not the most observant person," Annette remarked, watching the street below. "He's obsessed with his research. More than I am. He's got tunnel-vision. Doubt he'd notice the Apocalypse happening if demons were clawing up through the streets."

"He's always had an obsessive personality," Grayson commented, remembering, very vividly, the workplace war between William and Alexia. "You know how he is. Gets his hooks in something—"

"And doesn't let go," Annette said, and nodded. "One of the reasons I just can't take it anymore."

"You're okay," Grayson said, and kissed her.

They wound up in his bed later that night, like they always did, and made love until they'd fallen asleep.

Grayson woke to the whine of his alarm. Annette had already gone to work, but had left a note apologizing for her quiet departure. Annette, like William, treated her research like a holy mission. He'd been worrying about her; Annette had been driving herself harder than she'd ever driven herself before, and the stress had started to whittle her down. The Japanese, Jill had told him, had a word— _karōsh_ _i_ —for death by overworking; Grayson worried Annette was headed that way, if she didn't slow down soon.

He dressed, then drove to the precinct. It was another eventful shift, but nothing out of the ordinary. They stopped a couple more speeders, a DUI, escorted a junkie out of Tony's Kitchen—the same one they'd hauled out of the parking lot at Speedy Burger—and broke up a violent fight between a couple of day-drunks at Jack's Bar. One had split his head open, the other had had his eye gouged.

After a few weeks, Grayson had really settled into the role. He'd gotten to know the other guys pretty well, and Marvin and him had hit if off, once he'd demonstrated he was competent at the job.

Grayson was headed home that night from another long shift, and so was Marvin, who'd decided to accompany him to the parking garage.

"Heard there's gonna be a big thunderstorm tonight," Marvin said. "Summer, man. It's crazy 'round here. Sometimes lightnin' gets so bad, you can see it strike the ground."

"You know anyone who's ever been hit by lightning?" Grayson asked.

"This one guy, yeah. He lived."

They saw Chief Irons down in the garage. He was unloading something from the trunk of his black '74 Cadillac Deville.

"Heya, Chief," Marvin said.

Irons turned around. He was a heavy-set guy with a thick iron gray mustache. Wore a thin black trench-coat and trilby hat, a vest and dress pants. He held a taxidermy owl, its huge yellow eyes surprised at nothing. "Gentleman," Irons grunted. Watery hazel eyes were nested in deep pockets of pink doughy flesh, like someone had thumbed a pair of buttons into a lump of bubblegum.

"You a taxidermist, sir?" Grayson asked, staring at the owl. Its surprised, glassy eyes stared back. For a moment, he had a fleeting recollection of Alexia's porcelain dolls, staring at him from their showcase. Though, unlike the owl, they hadn't looked surprised; they'd looked catatonic, like lobotomized Victorian girls.

"It's a hobby," Irons said, and crossed the tarmac, the owl now surprised at the door Irons shouldered his bulk through, gone.

Marvin looked at him. "Chief's a weird guy," he remarked. "And I know I told you not to talk shit 'bout your fellow officers, 'cause that kinda thing comes back to bite you in the ass. But Irons? He ain't nobody's darling, Harman."

"He's the kind of guy you don't ever trust," Grayson agreed.

"You and Valentine are off tomorrow. Any plans?" Marvin grinned.

"You're awfully invested in my love-life for a guy who'd said he doesn't normally involve himself in that kinda thing," Grayson countered, with a shit-eating grin.

"S.T.A.R.S ain't technically R.P.D, my man. Privately funded."

"So that gives you a pass to be nosy, huh, Lieutenant?"

"Damn right," Marvin said, and laughed. "They control their own people. I ain't worried."

"Gotta point. Answer your question, I dunno. She wanted to take a trip out to Stoneville, but it's kinda far from Raccoon. Or Arklay City, which is also a ways from here."

Marvin suddenly handed him something, a photograph. It was the only other picture Grayson had of Alexia, the one he kept in his wallet, hidden behind his credit and insurance cards. "You dropped this, by the way," Marvin said. "Who is she? Picture's too old to be your daughter. Girl's dressed like it's 1980."

"I don't have a daughter," Grayson said, and quickly stashed the photograph inside his wallet. "And the photo was taken in '82. She was a childhood friend. Her name was Alexia."

"Was?"

"She died." It had gotten easier to say out loud, now that Alfred wasn't around to exacerbate things. "Freak accident."

Marvin frowned. "Sorry to hear it, man. Must've meant somethin' to you, you kept her picture all these years."

"She meant a lot." Alexia had meant to him what Annette meant to him now; but he didn't tell Marvin that. "I still miss her, you know? I was fifteen when she died. But… well, that was a long time ago."

Marvin nodded. "I understand," he said, and left it at that.

Grayson stopped at the shooting range, where Chris, Jill, Barry and Forest rotated through a small arsenal of guns. Another officer—Grayson was pretty sure his name was Elliot Edwards—was shooting by himself.

When she saw him, Jill beamed. "Hey, Grayson."

Barry looked at Chris, then looked at him. Barry was the oldest member of S.T.A.R.S, and kind of looked like a skinnier John Goodman, the sort of blue-collar dad who barbecued every Fourth of July, and, if he wasn't working for S.T.A.R.S, would have worked out of a truck. "Heya, Harman," he greeted, scratching a scruffy cheek.

Chris, on the other hand, was a young, built guy with a shag of brownish-red hair, which he usually wore spiked, and blueish-gray eyes. He always looked like he was pissed off about something. "Harman."

"How ya doin', man," Forest said, grinning cockily. Louisiana, Grayson decided; that was his accent. He took his turn to shoot.

Jill kissed him. "We're just prepping for an op that's coming up," she said.

"Op?" Grayson asked.

"Buncha weird murders been goin' on in the Arklays," Barry said, hitching up his pants. "Want us to investigate it."

Grayson had heard, tangentially, about the Arklay murders. The papers had dubbed them The Cannibal Murders, because the victims—mostly hikers, campers, and weekenders—had been eaten.

"Yeah, I heard about that," Grayson said. "So they got S.T.A.R.S looking into it? Not Homicide?"

"Could be dealing with a serial killer," Chris said. "They want the big guns."

He fired a few rounds with them, then packed it in, heading out to his car. Jill walked with him. "So we going to Stoneville?" she asked. "This investigation's gonna keep us busy, Grayson. Might not have much free time. Should take advantage of me while you can." She grinned.

"It's a long way from Raccoon," Grayson said.

"You could use some time away," Jill said. "You're such a homebody."

"I like hiking. Sometimes."

"Walking a few blocks to get good Italian take-out isn't hiking, Grayson."

"It counts," he said, and opened the driver-side door of his car.

"I think it'd be good for you," Jill said, hands on his chest. He could feel their warmth through his shirt. "Do it for me. Please?"

"I'll think about it. Okay?"

"All right. And did I mention S.T.A.R.S got a new rookie?"

"Oh yeah?"

Jill nodded. "Her name's Rebecca Chambers. Just joined. Good kid."

"Kid?"

"She's eighteen."

Grayson shook his head. "You know, sure, let's just roll with it. There's an eighteen-year-old working on a spec-ops team. Why not?"

She laughed, playfully punched him in the arm. "Hey, I wasn't the one who hired her. Talk to Captain Wesker. She's a genius when it comes to medical stuff, I'm telling you. It's crazy."

"In a world where something like The Cannibal Murders exist? Not that crazy," Grayson said, and climbed into his car. Nor did it sound crazy in a world where, just fifteen years ago, a young English girl had graduated from Oxford University at the age of ten, and became a chief researcher for Umbrella. "I'll call you later, okay?"

"You always forget. I'll call you," Jill said, and kissed him. "I'll see you." She shut the door and walked back to the shooting range.

Grayson watched her go, then drove home.


	4. Help and Landsharks

When he arrived home, Annette was waiting for him outside his building. It had started raining; she watched him from underneath her black umbrella, a sheepish smile on her face.

"Sorry, I know you were at work—I tried calling you, but I guess you were busy." Annette wrung her hands in that way she always did whenever she was nervous or embarrassed.

"It's okay. You haven't been out here long, I hope?"

"What—no, no. I just got here not too long ago," Annette said, and collapsed her umbrella, shaking the rain off it. She walked with him into his apartment building, and up the stairs. "I, uh—I got you something."

"Didn't have to do that," Grayson said, fishing his keys from his pocket and unlocking his door. He gestured for Annette to go in first, then followed her, shutting the door behind them.

"It's nothing like that," Annette said, and reached into the pocket of her lab coat for something. It was a wristband; a small screen mounted to the strap glowed green, the word VISITOR spelled out in white monospace. "So you can access the lobby to my laboratory," she told him. "You'll need to fill out a lot of paperwork at the front-desk, but—well, you're a cop. You're used to paperwork."

"You said I wasn't allowed in your laboratory," Grayson said, turning the bracelet in his fingers. It reminded him of a hospital band. "Something about it being against policy?"

"There's exceptions," Annette said, and smiled. "Sherry has one, too. Don't question it too much, okay?"

"Why give me this? What about William?"

"Don't worry about William. He's… been busy," Annette said, and shook her head.

"If he sees me down there and knows you were the one who—"

"Then I guess we tell him," Annette said, looking him in the eyes. "About us. But I don't think it'll come to that. William's blind to everything but his research, it—forget it."

"What's going on in that laboratory, Annette?" He knew enough about Umbrella from his experiences with Alfred and Alexia that there was more going on than Annette was letting on. Grayson knew Umbrella cut ethical corners; Rockfort was a company-owned prison, a glorified gulag.

"I can't get into it," Annette said, fishing out a cigarette. She walked out onto his balcony and lit it, blowing smoke. "I'm crossing several lines right now by even telling you this."

"You need help. That's why you gave me the wristband."

She looked at him and nodded. "If something happens, you and Sherry will be safe down there. NEST is protected."

"NEST?"

"The laboratory," Annette said, and paused, rubbing her forehead. "I shouldn't even be telling you this."

"Well, I would've found out eventually, right?" Grayson held up the wristband, adding, "You gave me this."

"Yeah. But maybe I'm just hoping you'll never need to use it."

"What's going on, Annette? Seriously."

She didn't answer him right away, taking a long drag on her cigarette. Smoke curled away from her nostrils and mouth. "William's in trouble," Annette remarked, without looking at him. "The investigation committee wants him to report in, but he's been ignoring them."

"His research?"

Annette nodded. "What else?" She finished her cigarette and flicked it over the railing. It fell to the cement like a tiny meteor. "He thinks he's getting a raw deal from the company, and I guess he kinda is. He wants to find another party to fund his research."

"You're not telling me something," Grayson remarked, knowing that look on her face.

"I'm already telling you more than I should, Grayson," she said, and looked at him. Her eyes looked even bluer than usual in the twilight. "Just—just hold on to that wristband, okay? Maybe you'll never need it. But if you do, you have it."

Grayson nodded slowly, pocketing it. "How would I get to the laboratory?"

"Go to the Umbrella building," Annette told him. "Show them the wristband at the front-desk. You're in the system. You just need to finalize some paperwork, like I said. Social security details, and all that shit."

"Annette, I'm a cop. If something illegal is—"

"You know as well as I do that you can't touch Umbrella, Grayson."

He frowned. She was right. If Grayson tried to open an investigation, Irons would probably shut it down, and Umbrella would tear him apart in the courts. Alexia had once told him the Raccoon City Police Department was in Umbrella's pocket, that the company had controlled Raccoon for years.

"You're right." He watched the Raccoon City Radio tower blinking in the distance, against a blue velveteen sky. "It just feels wrong, you know? Being part of this. Knowing something shady is going on, and just letting it happen. That's not what cops do."

"You're becoming too idealistic," Annette pointed out, and she had a point. He'd changed since coming to Raccoon City. "Sure, cops are supposed to uphold the law. But that's rarely the case. It's a power thing. A craving for authority. You've never had any real control in your life, right?" She stared right into him. "Alfred always called the shots before you came here. Now what? You've got a uniform, and suddenly you're the world's cleanest cop?"

"I just—no, I've done shit I'm not proud of. I've got no pedestal to stand on."

"If something happens to Umbrella, it's gonna take a hell of lot more than one guy, Grayson," Annette said. "It's gotta be a systematic dismantling."

"What? You suddenly against your employer?"

"Maybe. I don't know yet," Annette said, frowning. A warm wind ruffled her hair. "Time will tell, I guess. See how things go with the investigation committee."

"Assuming you can get William to meet with them," Grayson said. "Why not contact S.T.A.R.S? They're not part of the R.P.D, and this kinda thing seems more their element."

Annette laughed. "S.T.A.R.S? No. They can't do anything. Irons won't let them."

"Always knew the guy rubbed me the wrong way."

"You have no idea," Annette said.

He wasn't sure why the question came to mind, but Grayson asked it anyway. "Do you know anything about The Cannibal Murders?"

Annette looked at him.

"Is it related to the Arklay Laboratory? You think someone fucked up?" Grayson asked seriously. "They had these weird sharks there, when I was a kid. I think Alexia called it Project Neptune?"

"Are you suggesting sharks are eating people in the Arklays, Grayson?"

"No—I mean, maybe? I don't know. Maybe they fucking evolved legs? I just know there was weird shit going on in that laboratory, fifteen years ago."

"There are no mutant landsharks, Grayson," Annette said, giggling. "It's probably some whack-job who's been hiding out in the mountains. There was a serial killer up there a couple of years ago." She shrugged. "Maybe it's a copycat?"


	5. Anyone Know Anything?

Grayson hadn't spoken to Jill since that morning. Just said she'd be getting her gear together for the Arklays op, and not to bother calling her, because she wouldn't have her cellphone, and anyway, the reception out there was shit. But she'd promised she'd be home that night, and that they'd go somewhere nice since they'd never made it to Stoneville.

But he wasn't really concerned about whether or not Jill would come home that night. Annette had been keeping him company, up until she'd gotten a call from work. Then she'd gone, and he'd found himself babysitting Sherry. Though Sherry didn't like calling him a babysitter; Sherry was twelve-years-old, and figured she was big enough to look after herself. And for the most part, Sherry did look after herself, and did a really good job of it too, so he let her do her thing.

They were walking down Ennerdale. He needed to swing by the precinct to pick up his notebook; he'd left it in the east office, in his locker.

Clancy worked the front-desk that day, and grinned when he saw him.

"Here to file a complaint, sir?"

"Not riding patrol today, Clancy?" Grayson asked, smiling.

"Thanks for stating the obvious, my man," Clancy said, shuffling a few papers. He looked at Sherry. "Hey, didn't notice you there, little cousin. How goes?"

"It goes," Sherry said. She wore blue jeans and a Sailor Moon T-shirt. "You didn't tell me Haley was out of town, dummy."

Haley was Clancy's daughter, and two years younger than Sherry. Sherry and her were pretty close.

"She's at her grandparent's house," Clancy said. "You know, Katie's parents. She'll be back next week. Sunday, I think?"

Sherry sighed.

Clancy paused when the phone rang. "Sorry. Gotta take this," he said, and took the phone off the cradle, nestling it between his shoulder and jaw. His voice took on a telemarketer quality, and then he was lost in a conversation about someone's stolen bike.

"Come on, Sherry," Grayson told her, and walked toward the east office. Marvin was there, talking with one of the detectives about something.

When they'd finished their conversation, Marvin looked over and grinned. "Heya, boot," he teased, and firmly shook Grayson's hand. He looked at Sherry and raised an eyebrow. "So you _do_ gotta daughter."

Grayson laughed. "She's not mine. This is Sherry, Clancy's little cousin."

"Yeah? Dunn's mentioned her a couple of times. Usually when he's talkin' 'bout his daughter. He loves that kid."

"I'd hope so," Grayson said. "He is her father."

"Yeah? My uncle's a father too, and he's a piece of shit," Marvin said, and shrugged. Then, to Sherry, "Can I get you somethin' to drink? We got pop, water."

Sherry shook her head. "No thank you."

"No problem," Marvin said, and nodded. Then he looked at Grayson. "Brings you here, Harman? It's your day off."

"Left my notebook in my locker."

Marvin shook his head. "C'mon, Harman. You're supposed to be past this rookie shit."

"I got distracted."

"By Jill, I bet."

Sherry stared.

"Nothin'," Marvin said to her.

"You were making an innuendo," Sherry stated bluntly.

Marvin sucked his teeth and bobbed his head a bit, and said, "Smart kid. Damn." He tucked a fat white plastic binder under his arm. "Should get goin', though," he said. "Got work to do." He cracked a grin and thumbed over his shoulder, at a row of dark gray lockers. "You know where the lockers are, rookie."

"Hey, Lieutenant. Before you go? You know anything about that shit with S.T.A.R.S in the Arklays? Saw you talking to the detective."

"Nah, man," Marvin said, shaking his head. "S.T.A.R.S is S.T.A.R.S. Besides, you know I can't talk investigation details."

"So you know something?"

"Told you, Harman. I don't. Not yet anyway. They need to tell the department anythin', they will." Marvin walked away, shouldering through the door to the lobby.

Grayson unlocked his locker and took his notebook from the top shelf, where he'd left a few granola bars, which were now an unpleasant kind of soft-sticky, and a roll of duct-tape. He always kept duct-tape around; it could be used for everything and anything. Alexia had taught him that. He'd seen her patch machines with duct tape until the techs showed up to fix things.

"You don't keep anything in your locker?" Sherry asked. "At school, we put stickers in them, or pictures and posters and stuff. I knew this one girl who put glitter all over hers. She got detention."

"Yeah, glitter's not really my thing," Grayson remarked, and shut his locker.

Alfred had instilled a certain paranoia in him, so he checked that all the pages were intact. They were. He'd been jotting notes about the secret passage underneath the precinct, which he'd read about in some papers from the station's former museum days. Some kind of storage space, from what Grayson had understood, that had housed the museum's most valuable artifacts. It would safely get Sherry and him underground, and to NEST, if shit went sideways like Annette said it could.

Briefly, Grayson wondered if there was some connection between the shit that could go sideways, Umbrella, and the S.T.A.R.S op in the Arklays. It seemed more than a coincidence, all of this happening at once, and probably because it was.

"Grayson?"

He slipped the notebook into his back pocket and looked at Sherry. "Yeah?"

"Are you okay? You've been staring at that notebook for a long time. Is it your diary?"

Grayson laughed. "No, it's my police notebook."

"I tried writing in a diary once, but got pretty bored after a couple of days," Sherry said, and shrugged. "Then my mom found it and accidentally threw it away when she was cleaning the house."

"Annette cleans?"

"Sometimes," Sherry said, staring at him with Annette's big blue eyes. But unlike Annette, there was something in the shape of her face—William's handiwork—that reminded Grayson of a Keebler elf. "But she's gotta be in the mood for it," she continued. "Mom gets these random bursts of energy, where she cleans everything for no reason."

"That actually doesn't surprise me," Grayson said, heading out of the east office, into the lobby. "She's stressed all the time. How she blows off steam, I guess."

"Well, if she took more days off, maybe she wouldn't be stressed all the time."

"That's not fair, Sherry. Your mom's doing important work."

Sherry frowned, made a small adjustment to the red hairband he'd bought her. Annette had helped him pick it out. "I know," she said. "She's making medicine."

Grayson stopped at the front-desk, where Clancy took down a complaint from an agitated geriatric. Something about kids vandalizing his lawn. Clancy nodded absently as the old guy kept repeating himself, and when Clancy had finished with him, and the asshole had walked away, Grayson walked over.

"Gotta question," Grayson said to Clancy, leaning on the desk.

"Maybe an answer," Clancy said, running a hand through what was left of his red hair. He'd buzzed it once he'd joined the force; before that, he'd had hair like The Ramones.

"Hey, Sherry, you mind going over there for a minute?" Grayson gestured toward an upholstered bench near the wall.

Sherry looked between them, made a face, said, "You're gonna talk about girls, aren't you?" and walked away.

"Kinda," Grayson said, mostly to himself. Then, to Clancy, "You've been chatting up that new S.T.A.R.S rookie, right? The Barely Legal?" Grayson tapped the desk, trying to conjure a name. "Rebecca," he said, and snapped his fingers. "That's right. Rebecca Chambers."

Clancy chewed the inside of his cheek, repeatedly clicking the spring-loaded button on his pen. "Man, you make me sound like a fucking pedophile, you say it like that." He stopped clicking the pen and tossed it onto the desk, loudly cracking his knuckles. "You're an asshole. But yeah, sure. I've been chatting her up. So what? She's legal."

"First of all, your flirting sucks, man. Asking a girl like that what Slayer album they like the best ain't the best approach. But that's beside the point. Anyway, you know anything about that Arklay op S.T.A.R.S is on?"

"Chambers didn't really tell me much. I'm kinda worried 'bout her, honestly." He frowned and leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking loudly. "From what I hear, precinct lost contact with Bravo team yesterday."

"Lost contact?"

"That's all I heard, man. But Alpha team's out there looking for 'em."

"Jill never mentioned this to me."

"Probably 'cause it's none of yours or my business, man. Above our pay-grade. We're beat cops, not S.T.A.R.S."

"Irons hasn't said anything?"

Clancy half snorted, half laughed. "Like that asshole would say shit. He's too busy playing with the taxidermy collection in his office. I been in there once, man." He shook his head. "Guy's gotta fucking stuffed wolf in there. Who does fucking taxidermy as a hobby? Weirdos, man."

"Sure. One other question."

"Man, you're just full of questions tonight, buddy. Sure. Shoot."

"Is there actually a secret passage in the precinct, or is someone fucking with me?"

"The old guys swear there is, but who fucking knows. I ain't ever seen it. Why?"

"Was just curious," Grayson said, and smacked the side of the desk as though it was a horse, and he wanted it to run. "I'll talk to you later, Clancy. Have fun driving the desk."

"Yeah, fuck you too," Clancy said, and snickered—and cursed when the phone rang.

"Before we go," he said to Sherry, who was lost in her Gameboy, music jangling from its built-in speakers, "I gotta make a call. Just wait right here. Payphones are in the other room."

Without looking up from the Gameboy, Sherry said, "Okay. Can we get some ice cream after this?"

"Sure," he said, and patted her head. "I'll be right back."

He went into the east hallway, side-stepped a guy in a suit, and made his way to the payphones. Grayson took a handset off its hook and dialed Alfred's unlisted number. The phone rang for a while before Alfred picked up; he'd once told Grayson that was how he differentiated important calls from unimportant ones—if they were important, then the caller wouldn't hang up.

"Alfred Ashford speaking," came Alfred's cold British voice.

"Alfred, buddy. It's Grayson."

"If you're calling to ask me more stupid questions about the USS, I swear—"

"No, not about the USS. Other stupid questions." He looked around, saw nobody nearby, and dropped his voice to a whisper. "You know if anything's going on in the Arklay lab?"

"I told you, Grayson. They don't keep me informed of the research side of things." He'd probably caught Alfred at a bad time, and that was why he was so snippy; then again, most times were, Grayson decided, bad for Alfred, and he was almost always snippy. "Why are you asking me this?"

"Just curious. Do you at least know if it's still operational?"

"I couldn't say. I just train the bloody paramilitary, Grayson."

"Thanks anyway, Alfred."

"Are you coming back to bloody Rockfort yet, or are you still busy playing cop?"

"Still busy playing cop, Alfred. Like I said, I wanna join the USS. Eventually."

Alfred sighed loudly, in that way he always did whenever he wanted to emphasize how displeased he was about something. "You're still on about the bloody USS? Grayson—"

"Before you finish that sentence. Birkin. Annette mentioned he's being investigated?"

"Again, I don't know what happens over in Raccoon City," Alfred said, the displeasure in his tone sharpening to a razor's edge. "I have no idea what William's up to, nor do I particularly care. Is he paramilitary? No. So he's not my bloody problem."

"I just figure you being Edward's grandson, you'd know something a little more substantial." Then again, Grayson thought to himself, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that he didn't; Umbrella had intentionally—or it seemed like that anyway—cut Alfred out of their business.

"I certainly carry some degree of clout because of my grandfather, yes. But that doesn't mean my superiors take the time to update me on what's going on in the labs. That was more Alex—you know."

 _It was more Alexia's thing_ , Grayson told himself. "Yeah, I know. Well, thanks anyway, Alfred. How's dad?"

"He's recovered a bit. He's doing light housework, despite my protests. I have a doctor flying in to look at him."

"Bet he's just over the moon about that."

"He won't be happy, no. I haven't told him yet. You know how he is about doctors."

"I'll call him later. I should get going, though."

"When you're finally bored of playing bloody copper, I'll have you flown back to Rockfort."

"Right. See you, Alfred." Grayson hung up.


	6. If You Won't Tell Me

Something bad had happened in the Arklays. He'd gotten a call from Clancy, who'd told him Jill was being treated at Raccoon General for injuries.

When he arrived at the hospital, Jill was conscious. She looked tired and weak, but ultimately okay, excluding a few bandages and bruises. Grayson sat in the chair beside her bed.

"I had to get twenty fucking stitches in my leg," Jill said, conversationally.

Grayson handed her a water bottle. "Sounds shitty," he remarked, watching her unscrew the cap. "But you look good. What the fuck happened out there?"

Jill didn't answer him immediately. It looked like the light had gone from her eyes, but only for a second. She came back into her head again, and said, "Everyone died. Except Chris, Barry, and Rebecca."

The hospital room looked like any other hospital room he'd ever been in, done up in neutrals and medical tiling. Grayson figured if you've been in one hospital room, you've been in them all. The last time he'd been in a room like this, Alfred and him had been in Lima, and his father had been recovering from a mini-stroke. But his father had never quite recovered; his motor skills were shaky now, and he needed to walk around with a cane, even though his dad insisted that he didn't need it.

His mind drifted away from Lima, and settled in the present again. "Everyone?" he said, staring at her.

Jill nodded. "Forest, Joseph, Richard—shit. Yes, all of them, Grayson," she said, staring blankly at the television opposite her bed. It sat on an articulated framework, played a muted telecast from _Good Evening, Raccoon_. "Fucking monsters," she said, finally. "They were killed by fucking monsters, Grayson. Forest? He was pecked to death by fucking mutant crows. Joseph? Torn apart by zombie dogs. Fucking zombie dogs. And Richard? A giant fucking snake killed him. Ate him whole. Jesus Christ."

"Slow down," Grayson said, and shook his head. He stared at her, clasping his hands between his knees. "You sure you weren't just hallucinating shit? You were pretty banged up, right? Maybe your brain was just—"

"I know what I fucking saw!" Jill snapped, and the sudden uptick in her volume made one of the nurses look at him like he was a piece of dog-shit. "Umbrella. They were behind it, Grayson," she said, quieter now. "They had a fucking lab in this mansion. This abandoned fucking mansion in the middle of the Arklays. Least we'd thought it was abandoned, and—shit, Wesker. He betrayed us. Shot Rebecca, but her vest saved her life."

Grayson frowned. The mansion couldn't be anywhere but the Spencer estate, and the lab, it was the Arklay Lab underneath it. "You'd mentioned zombie dogs? A giant snake?" he hazarded, watching her.

"That's what I fucking said," Jill said, and looked at him. "I saw zombies, too. People. Dead people. Like the kind in movies—and Jesus Christ, you probably think I'm insane. The way you're looking at me..."

"It does sound pretty crazy, Jill. You said it had something to do with Umbrella? Maybe there was a chemical leak in the lab there? Caused you to hallucinate."

"I know what I fucking saw, Grayson. I'm not insane. That place was crawling with monsters."

He nodded slowly. "I'll be right back," Grayson said, and stood.

"Fine. Go. Like you always do," Jill said, and turned her back to him.

He stepped into the hallway and took out his cellphone, dialing Annette's number. But all he got was interference, a looping static. Annette was in her laboratory, he decided, so Grayson figured now was as good a time as ever to utilize his wristband privileges.

Pocketing his cellphone, Grayson stepped back into Jill's room and said, "The precinct just called. I need to get down there."

"Fine," Jill said, without enthusiasm. "Go do your job."

"I'm sorry, Jill. It's my job."

"I know," she said, and sighed, curling up in her bed slightly. "I know. I'm just feeling selfish, I guess."

"I'll call you later," Grayson said, and left.

Umbrella's headquarters wasn't too far from Raccoon General, just a couple of blocks. And traffic wasn't too bad around this time of night, so Grayson arrived there in pretty record time.

The lobby was enormous, all glittering white marble and glass, and smelled like cleaning products. The tiles were arranged in the pattern of the company's logo, a hexagon divided like a pie-chart, each slice painted in a repeating scheme of red, then white, then red. A clerk, dressed in an immaculate black suit, sat behind the enormous front-desk, tapping out something on the computer.

Grayson approached the desk and tapped the top of it to get the man's attention, and smiled when he did. "I'm a visitor," he said, and flashed his wristband. "Mind pointing me in the right direction?"

The clerk turned around in his chair, and rolled it over to a plastic filing module. He pulled a binder from the module, opened it, and took out several forms, neatly arranging them on the desktop in front of Grayson.

"I'll need you to fill these admittance forms, sir," the clerk said, his tone aseptically professional. "Before that, however, I need to check you in our system. It will only take a moment."

The clerk produced something from under his desk that looked a bit like a scan-gun, like the kind they used in grocery stores to log bar-codes. It was wired to the clerk's computer by a thin rubber cable.

"What do I do?" Grayson asked.

"Hold up your wristband, sir."

Grayson nodded, then raised his wristband.

The clerk scanned it, and the thing beeped. He put the gun away, then turned to his computer, his fingers flickering over the keys. "Grayson Harman? It says you've been cleared by Annette Birkin."

"That's right."

The clerk nodded. "Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Harman. Please fill out those forms, and we'll log it to our system. We just require a few additional details from you." He gestured toward a lounge area comprised of sleek-looking Scandinavian leather couches and coffee-tables. "You can fill the forms out over there. When you're finished, please return the forms to me."

It took him two hours to fill out the forms; he'd even had to sign an NDA, and a waiver. When the clerk gave him the go-ahead, Grayson was directed to a set of locked fire-doors to the right of the elevators. RESTRICTED AREA was stenciled on the doors. A small computer kiosk inset in the wall beside the doors prompted Grayson to scan his wristband, so he did; the kiosk whirred, beeped, and he heard the locks on the doors release. He went in.

A set of concrete steps that went underground, like a subway. A few people in suits and lab coats were walking up the steps, speaking quietly to one another. And when they saw him, they stared, probably thinking he'd made a wrong turn somewhere. Grayson smiled and flashed his wristband.

"Probably with that Chess fanatic's construction company," one of the men in suits said to a woman in a lab coat. "They've been doing repairs for months. In and out, in and out. It's annoying." Then they were through the doors, gone.

Grayson shook his head and continued down.

There wasn't a train at the bottom of the steps, like he'd initially anticipated; it was a cable-car, painted dark army green. The Umbrella logo was emblazoned on the side of it, and with the frequency he saw the logo, Grayson theorized it was some kind subliminal brainwashing. Like how North Korea had the face of its dictator in every house and building to remind the people who was in charge.

He boarded the car, found nobody else was riding. Which was fine with him; he didn't feel like dealing with people anyway. He just wanted to find Annette, and fast.

The car descended, riding the cables in humming silence. It was automated; he didn't see a pilot at the controls. He didn't like that, machines controlling the thing between him, and a long fall into darkness. Like how he hated elevators, because the only thing between him and a fiery crash was a computer algorithm.

When it stopped, Grayson was relieved to get off. A group of scientists boarded after he disembarked, and funnily enough, none of them even glanced at him. He guessed they thought that, if he'd come down this far, he probably had the right clearances.

The room he stood in was a cavernous tunnel studded with halogen lights, like tiny artificial stars. A set of huge vault-like doors stood in front of him, at the end of the expansion-grate catwalk from the dock.

An approximated female voice told him to step away from the doors for his own safety, so Grayson did. The doors whirred, magnetic bolts thumping out of place. And the doors started to slide open in segments, one layer after another, a red light flashing over his head. After a few moments, the doors had completely opened, revealing a lobby of some kind.

The lobby was schemed in white medical tile and glass. A front desk sat on his left, and people in scrubs sat behind it, staring at their computers. Again, the Umbrella logo loomed above the desk, and now Grayson was almost positive that it was, in fact, a kind of subliminal brainwashing. It wasn't as if everyone who worked for Umbrella were suffering from advanced dementia, and needed constant reminding of where they were. So brainwashing made the most sense to him.

He approached the desk, mentally preparing himself for another round of form-filling and question-answering. "My name's Grayson Harman," Grayson told the woman behind the desk, who was shuffling through papers. "I need to speak with Annette Birkin."

The woman looked at his wristband, took out one of those scan-gun things he'd seen the front-desk clerk use. "Hold out your wrist, please."

"Is this really necessary?" Grayson said, holding out his wrist. "The green light means I'm a visitor, right?"

"Protocol," the woman said, and left it at that. She looked at her computer. "Grayson Harman?"

"That's me."

"May I see a photo ID, please? Drivers licenses, company IDs, state-issued licenses, passports, and military IDs are all acceptable forms of identification."

"My photo is right on the fucking screen," Grayson said, icily.

"Protocol, sir."

He took out his driver's license and handed it to her. She looked at it, looked at him, tapped something out on her computer, and then returned it. "A second form of identification, please. For verification purposes."

"Are you fucking kidding me? My photo is right on the fucking screen, lady. And my face hasn't changed."

"Sir, if you don't calm down, I'll have security see you out."

Grayson could see the USS guys in his periphery moving closer. "I don't have a second form of identification. Just my driver's license. Call Annette Birkin."

"One moment," the woman said, and took her phone off its cradle. "Dr. Birkin? This is the front-desk. A man named Grayson Harman wants to see you."

"Thank you," Grayson grunted, mostly to himself.

A few minutes later, Annette appeared, hands in the pockets of her lab-coat. "Grayson?" she said, surprised. "What are you doing—"

"We need to talk," Grayson said. "Preferably," he continued, quietly, "somewhere quieter. I have questions."

Annette nodded, then motioned for him to follow. "We'll talk in the cafeteria. Your visitor access only gives you clearance for the lobby, cafeteria, and nap-room."

He followed her down a series of corridors, through automated doors marked VISITOR. "Is this the only visitor area?" he asked, mostly out of curiosity. NEST seemed too big to only have the one lobby.

"No. We're in the East Wing, on the far end of it," Annette told him. She side-stepped a couple of scientists, then through a door. In here, it smelled unpleasantly of food. A television mounted on the wall mumbled the news, one of those new LCD flat-screens. Annette sat down at one of the tables. "You want something to eat?" she asked, conversationally. "Food's actually not too bad. It smells worse than it really is."

"Nah. I'm fine," Grayson said, and shook his head. "Look, I need to ask you some things." He looked around. The cafeteria looked and felt like the interior of a fast-food restaurant, with its cheap wooden chairs and stools, and plastic tables and counters. He'd expected better from Umbrella. "First question. Do they really make you eat here? I thought you were pretty high up, Annette."

She laughed. "We have our own cafeteria. You know, the ones who have Admin Access. Or we eat in our offices. But I usually come to the cafeteria because William's never here."

Grayson nodded. "Okay, now the real questions." He lowered his voice, leaning toward her. "Did something happen in the Arklay laboratory? You and William used to work there, right? Before transferring to NEST. Jill just got back from her op. Mentioned monsters, and Wesker betraying them?"

Annette stared at him with her too-blue eyes, frowning. "One second," she said, and left the table. She came back with a coffee and sat down, tearing open two sugar packets and dumping the contents into her mug. She tore the foil from a creamer, dumped that in too, and stirred. "I don't know what happened," she said, finally. "They tried to blame William for it. Some kind of leak, but that's all I really know. What kind of monsters did Jill see?"

"Zombies," Grayson said, frowning. "What the fuck is going on, Annette? Be straight with me. I'm tired of dancing around this bullshit."

"I'm oblique about it because I want to protect you," Annette said, firmly. "The less you know about Umbrella, the safer you are. I don't want them putting you in their cross-hairs, Grayson. Even Alfred won't be able to save you, if shit goes south."

"Alfred owns half the fucking company."

"Yes, but there's a reason he's on Rockfort," Annette said. "You already know the story. They want him out of their hair. I wouldn't doubt Spencer's trying to figure out a way to kill Alfred without drawing attention to himself. The Ashfords might have a pretty shit reputation in Umbrella USA thanks to Alexander, but over in Europe? Their roots run real deep, Grayson. They've still got power over there, and a lot of friends in Umbrella Europe's brass."

She wasn't wrong. The Ashfords knew a lot of higher-ups in Umbrella Europe, like Annette had said, and their family still held a significant degree of political influence in England, and in Brussels. It didn't really surprise him that Spencer didn't want to poke the hornets nest.

"Right. Enough about Alfred, though. Arklay, Annette. I remember that giant fucking shark, the one I'd mentioned to you that night at my apartment. Were there other monsters?"

"Grayson, for your own sake, please. Keep your nose out of it."

"Annette, if something is gonna happen, I want to be prepared. I want to make sure Sherry's somewhere safe."

Annette sighed. "I don't know if something's gonna happen. It could, but we're still running simulations. But with the investigation committee breathing down William's neck, it's been hard. There's a lot of tension in our department right now."

"Annette. Anything you can tell me will help."

"Grayson, it's for your own safety. Please, stop fucking asking."

"What about Wesker? Can you at least tell me why he'd betrayed S.T.A.R.S? I thought he was doing an op for Umbrella."

"I don't really know what happened with Wesker," Annette said, and Grayson knew she'd meant that. "He's been at odds with Umbrella for years. For whatever reason. I'm guessing it boils down to money and power, the usual suspects. Like William, probably felt he was getting a raw deal, so he decided to take things into his own hands. Besides, I heard he'd died. From William."

"Wesker's dead?"

"That's what William said."

Grayson felt a strange sort of relief; it meant he didn't have to worry about Wesker blackmailing him anymore. One less problem for him to worry about. "I can't say I'm too upset," he remarked, and stood.

"Where are you going?"

"I figure if you won't tell me what happened in Arklay, maybe Irons will."

"Grayson. Don't."

"Sorry," he said. "If a storm's coming, I want out of Raccoon. With you and Sherry."


	7. Bad Moon Rising

Chief Irons' office was definitely a place that gave Grayson serial killer vibes; no normal person should be as interested in taxidermy as Irons was, who treated the hobby like fine art collecting. His office smelled like chemicals and whiskey, and old man cologne.

Irons was touching up the fur of the stuffed wolf Clancy had mentioned, its mouth opened in a silent roar, glass eyes staring vacantly into space. He wore one of those little monocle things, like jewelers, or those guys who painted miniatures, and was needling thread into the wolf's skin.

"Rips, Officer Harman, are my worst adversaries," Irons said, sweating, despite it being pretty cool in the office. "What can I help you with?" he asked, without looking at him.

"It's about the S.T.A.R.S op, Chief," Grayson said. "I wanted to ask some things."

"Not your concern, Harman," Irons said, and he finished sewing the rip. He packed away his sewing kit; removed the monocle. Wandering to his desk, Irons uncorked a crystal decanter of strong-smelling whiskey and poured himself a glass. He sat down, all three hundred pounds of him settling in the chair with a dangerous creak, and held the glass on the shelf of his belly. "You've been asking around," he told him. "Word travels pretty quick in the precinct."

"It's just a big deal, Chief." Grayson kept his tone polite, or close enough to polite that it wouldn't piss off Irons. "S.T.A.R.S got trashed. The ones who are alive are in the hospital. Something is going on. I wanna know if it's something we gotta worry about."

"Look," Irons said, and sipped his whiskey, "I get it, you're worried about Jill." He smiled, the doughiness of his face exaggerating the smile into something caricature-like. "Don't look so surprised, Harman. Everyone knows about you two. Anyway, you got nothing to worry about. Jill's okay. Everything's under control. You're wasting my damn time."

"If this is a concern for public safety, Chief," Grayson said, his tone barely passing for polite now, "then I don't really think it's a waste of time. Something happened in those mountains." He wanted to say that he knew it was connected to Umbrella, but decided against it. His attention grazed Irons' desk; he noticed a spread of e-mails there, each one signed W.B, and they read pretty belligerently. William Birkin, Grayson was sure; he was the only guy whose initials and condescension matched that kind of vitriol.

"You see something interesting, Harman?" Irons asked, and his voice had a kind of razor-sharp pleasantness that made Grayson's skin crawl.

"No, sorry," Grayson said, and shook his head.

"Okay," Irons said, still smiling. His eyes glinted like black pearls. "You can leave now."

Grayson nodded, turned and walked toward the door.

"Harman?"

He looked over his shoulder. Irons sat in deeper shadow, just beyond the halo of light emanating from his desk-lamp. His eyes, in that darkness, looked like the orbital sockets of a skull, and Grayson thought of Wesker, how he'd stared like that from across his desk. "You're a beat cop," he said, with that skin-crawling pleasantness. "Keep it that way."

Grayson nodded; left the room. He was glad to be out of there. He'd half expected Irons to shoot him in the back, per Umbrella's orders. If Rockfort had ever been anything but a prison, it had been a testament to how far Umbrella went in silencing their detractors. Shooting him was pretty within the realm of possibility when it came down to the company protecting its secrets.

But Irons hadn't shot him, which was good. He still had no definitive answers about what had happened in the Arklays, but that didn't matter anymore; Grayson knew, definitively, something was coming. Irons had told him so without realizing it. He'd said he was a beat cop, and to keep it that way—a warning. And then there were those e-mails from Birkin…

Grayson went downstairs, into the lobby. The same geriatric from before was complaining to the front-desk officer about kids, except they'd vandalized his car this time, and not his lawn. He'd learned the guy was a regular at the precinct, one of those old guys who liked to hear themselves complain—about tattoos, loud music, dogs barking, kids biking past their houses at hours they considered unreasonable.

He noticed Brad across the lobby, feeding coins to the vending machine by the door.

"Brad?"

Brad looked up. "Oh, shit. Harman." Brad looked like he wanted to bolt. "Look," he said, "I'm not in the fucking mo—"

"Jill's in the hospital. So is everyone else. But you're not," Grayson said, and pushed him against the vending machine. He'd never liked Brad; beating the shit out of him would be worth a suspension. "You run away again, Chickenshit?" he asked. "Jill, she didn't mention your name. Said only her, Barry, Rebecca and Chris got outta there alive."

"Let go of me, asshole."

"You're a sorry fucking excuse, Chickenshit," Grayson snapped, and he wasn't sure if it had been his confrontation with Irons, or the fact Brad was just there, that had riled him up. "You got no business being in S.T.A.R.S, you goddamn fucking coward. Jill's laid up in the hospital while your dumb fucking ass is buying soda from the vending machine." He shoved him, and Brad nearly went down, ass-over-head.

"If it wasn't for me, they wouldn't have gotten outta there," Brad shot back. "I was flying the chopper that got 'em outta that place, asshole."

"Of course you were," Grayson said, scowling. "Safer that way, right? You wait around on the chopper while the others are getting their asses handed to them."

"Your girlfriend's alive 'cause I got her home," Brad said. "So don't take your shit out on me, Harman. I'm sorry Jill's in the hospital. But that's better than dead, right?"

Grayson resisted the urge to punch him, stepped away. "Yeah," he said, "it's better than dead."

Brad retrieved his soda from the vending slot. "I gotta get back to work," he said, and shouldered past Grayson, jogging upstairs.

Grayson went home that night with a disciplinary warning. Sherry was staying at his place because she'd said she was lonely, but Grayson knew it was really because of his Nintendo 64. Annette, like pets, treated video games with a certain degree of hostile revulsion, the kind of woman who'd rather see Sherry playing soccer than playing Mario Kart. Not that Grayson blamed Annette; it was the sensible thing for any parent to want, to have their kids playing sports instead of video games. Still, Annette was a little too hard on the kid, and he liked seeing Sherry have fun.

Sherry beat him again and grinned. "You're really bad at this game, Grayson," she said, giggling.

"Maybe I'm just letting you win?" he teased, and set down the controller on his coffee-table, where last month's issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Chicago Review, and The New Yorker sat neglected.

"No, I know when someone lets me win. You're just really bad."

He laughed. "Don't have much time to practice these days," Grayson said, and shrugged. Someone knocked on his door. "One sec, kiddo." He ruffled her hair, and then answered the door.

Annette stood there, still, as always, in her lab coat. "Sherry left a note and said she'd come here?" she said.

"Yeah, she's here," Grayson said, and let her inside.

"Mom, I wanna stay here tonight," Sherry said, pouting. "I said so in the note. Please?" She stretched the please for a couple of seconds.

"You can't just invite yourself over to people's homes, Sherry."

Grayson wanted to say that Annette always invited herself over to his place, but because Sherry was there, he said nothing. He just grinned and shut the door behind her. "It's okay. I don't mind having Sherry over," he said. "Ordered some food, if you're hungry. Just don't touch the chicken strips. Those are Sherry's. She's real territorial about her chicken strips."

Annette smirked. "Do you _ever_ cook?"

"I'm a great cook," he replied, smiling. "But I'm a free man now. I cook dinner when I feel like it. Spent my whole life helping dad make _haute cuisine_ for the Ashfords, so I don't often feel like it."

Annette nodded. "Don't blame you, honestly. Anyway, mind if I go out onto your balcony for a smoke?"

"Not at all," Grayson said, and walked with her to the sliding door. He stepped out after her, had to kind of jimmy the door shut; sometimes it got stuck on the track. "So I visited Irons today," he said to her, watching her light a cigarette. "Got nothing but a warning from him. He had e-mails on his desk from William. Know something about that?"

Annette took her cigarette between her fingers, the cherry glowing bright orange in the twilight, and he thought of the light, then, his permanent north star, atop the Raccoon City radio tower. "William had Irons watching S.T.A.R.S. Among other things," she said, and shook her head, folding her arms across her chest. "Wanted him to up security. People were getting nosy, especially the press. Some reporter's been hounding me for an interview. Says it's about Umbrella's upcoming scholarship program, but I somehow doubt that."

"So you gonna give the interview?" he asked.

"If I say no, it just looks suspicious," Annette said. "And maybe it really is just about the scholarship program?" She slipped the cigarette between her lips again, blowing smoke.

"Is Irons in Umbrella's pocket, or William's?" Grayson asked, watching her.

Annette shrugged. "Both, maybe," she said. "Maybe Irons figures he can collect from William, and the company? Two birds with one stone. He walks away with enough money to retire to Mexico."

"You really don't know much about what's going on with William, do you?"

Annette shook her head. "He doesn't really tell me anything, Grayson. You know that. It's how we—well, you know." She finished her cigarette and flicked it over the railing. He wondered how many of the cigarette butts on the sidewalk belonged to Annette.

"How we wound up together," he finished, and leaned on the railing.

"Don't think I regret it," Annette said quickly, as if she was afraid she'd insulted him. "Because I don't, Grayson. It's just, I don't know. I'd never expected it to work out like this. When I'd first married William, he wasn't a bad guy. He could actually be kind of romantic at times. Now? There's no effort anymore. I feel invisible. And honestly? I feel like I don't even love him anymore."

"We don't need to talk about this," Grayson told her, mostly because it made him uncomfortable. He still had a lot of complicated feelings to untangle, and right now, he didn't want to pick at that knot. "It's okay, Annette. I get it. I'm not offended."

"I'm going to divorce him," Annette said, and there was something different in her voice this time that hadn't been there before, in all the times she'd said that—resolve. "Forget waiting for his fucking research. I'm gonna talk to a lawyer, start the whole process."

"Annette—"

"Did you… change your mind?"

Grayson shook his head. "No," he said. "I just have some things to work out."

"With Jill, you mean."

He nodded.

"I understand," Annette said, and she reached over and squeezed his hand.

Jill, and he still hadn't quite reconciled his feelings about Alexia. Alexia had been dead for fifteen years, but Grayson had never stopped thinking about her, about the woman she might have grown into if life had given her the chance.

 _No_ , he told himself, it wasn't life that had denied her the chance. Alexander had, when he'd decided that Alexia had been nothing more than an experiment. If all she'd been was an experiment, then what had she stood to lose? She, in her thirteen-year-old mind, hadn't been human. She'd been a genetically-engineered Pinocchio.


	8. Incident at Grill 13

That feeling that something bad was about to happen had intensified, transmogrified into involuntary shivers and neck-prickling, and tinfoil-hat paranoia. Grayson found himself wondering if his colleagues were on Umbrella's pay-roll, if they knew about the bad-thing-that-was-about-to-happen.

He finished up an eventful shift: he'd cuffed a couple of routine junkies, had arrested a guy who'd beaten his wife to a bloody, bruised pulp, had been one of the first people on the scene involving a crackhead, and someone he'd bitten. The crackhead had ripped a huge chunk out of the victim's neck, and Grayson wasn't sure if the poor guy would survive the ambulance ride to Raccoon General. He'd barely been hanging on when the paramedics had loaded him onto the gurney, and had whisked him away in a whirl of lights and alarms.

When he got back to the precinct, Jill was there, talking to a cop whose name Grayson could never remember. The rookie—Rebecca—stood beside Jill. Ever since the op in the Arklays, S.T.A.R.S had been in a weird transitional phase; most of the team had died, so their backers were toying with the idea of pulling funds and consolidating the team into SWAT. And at this rate, Grayson was pretty sure that would happen; S.T.A.R.S no longer had the manpower to function at full capacity, and the precinct didn't seem interested in scouting new talent.

Jill smiled when she saw him, pecked him on the lips. "Grayson," she greeted, and squeezed his hand.

He gave her a half-hearted squeeze and a half-hearted smile. He still hadn't broached the subject about Annette, and he felt bad about that; but Annette hadn't broached the subject about him either, so Grayson wasn't sure why he felt bad. They were still puzzling things out; whatever resolve Annette had had that night she'd told him she would talk to a divorce lawyer, it had, it seemed, fizzled out.

"Your boyfriend?" Rebecca asked, and she grinned. Rebecca had an elfish face. Her eyes were very green, framed by chestnut hair she'd cut pixie-style.

"Uh-huh," Jill said, and grinned back. "He looks like a movie star, doesn't he?"

"He does," Rebecca agreed. "He looks like Gregory Peck."

"To Kill a Mockingbird," Grayson said. "My dad loves that movie. Me, I prefer Spellbound."

"Jill said you were a film junkie."

"She wasn't wrong."

Jill collected papers from the officer-whose-name-he-couldn't-remember, and said, "Have to review some paperwork. I'll catch you after work, Grayson." She left, and Rebecca went with her.

He went home that night without calling Jill, and called Annette instead. No answer. Annette was probably at work, so Grayson went to NEST. He rode the cable-car down to the laboratory. The front-desk clerk hadn't given him much shit this time, and she called Annette when he'd asked, very politely, to do so.

"Grayson?" Annette said, surprised. "What are you doing here?"

"You need to come up for some air," Grayson told her. "So get your stuff, we're going out."

"Grayson, I can't—look, I have shit I need to do."

"You can do it later. Come on, Annette."

"Grayson—"

"I don't wanna hear it, Annette," he said. "Just for tonight. Please. For me."

Annette sighed. She looked away. Seemed to consider. Then, "Okay. But William—"

"He's too busy jerking it over his research. Doubt he'll notice."

She laughed; it was the sort of hesitant laugh someone did when they knew they shouldn't laugh, but couldn't help themselves. "Let me get my things," she said, and she went to get her things.

They stopped by Annette's house so she could change. Grayson couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Annette in regular clothes; she wore a nice pair of dark jeans, and an ivory blouse, the first three buttons opened to the dip of her clavicle. Perfume came off her, something sweet and subtle that reminded him of honeysuckle. Face done up in shades of nude.

"You didn't have to get all dolled up." He'd changed into a dark button-up and jeans, and the Chelsea boots Alfred had bought him for his birthday. "We're just going to Grill 13."

"He says, 'You didn't have to get all dolled up', but he's dressed like that." Annette smiled, and said, "Cologne, too? Pulling out all the stops, Grayson."

"I figure all I need is a little splash to seduce you."

"Please," Annette said, and she half snorted, half laughed, rolling her blue eyes. "All you need for that is your face and muscl—I mean, your _personality and intelligence_." She grinned, and it was nice to see her smiling like that. Annette had a beautiful smile, one of those smiles that radiated and glowed.

"How dare you," he said, and drove away from her house. He was grinning to himself. "Using me like that. Am I just a hunk of meat to you?"

"You _are_ a hunk," she pointed out, and they both laughed. "I'm sorry," she added, and shook her head. "I have no idea what's gotten into me. That was a lame joke. _I'm_ lame."

"You are _absolutely_ lame," Grayson agreed. "But I like that about you, Annette." He paused, remembering something similar he'd said to Alexia, how she'd laughed like that, too. He frowned, turned right, drove down a narrow street between brownstones.

Grill 13 was busy that night, but Grayson had expected that; it was a popular spot. It smelled like fried things and beer. A smiling hostess led them to an empty table, then handed them laminate menus and asked what they'd like to drink. Grayson ordered scotch; Annette ordered wine.

"So how's Sherry doing?" he asked, browsing the different steak options. The London broil with mushroom sauce looked particularly good, so he decided on that.

Grill 13 was done in an earthy scheme of reds and browns, with accents of dark wood. The ambient lighting and the colors made the place feel intimate and warm.

"She's sleeping over Clancy's," she said, and she'd decided on the salmon steak with lemon-butter sauce. They gave their orders to the waitress when she returned, and Annette sipped her wine and said to him, "You're wondering if I've told her yet. About us."

"She's a sharp kid. She's gotta be wondering why you spend so much time with me," Grayson said, and sipped his scotch. It was good scotch too, with a pleasant smoky flavor. It was the kind of scotch Alfred and his dad liked to drink, usually with cigars.

"She does wonder, and no, I haven't told her." Annette stared into her glass, then nursed her wine. She looked at him across the lacquered expanse of the table. Set her glass down, fiddled with it, rotated the stem between her thumb and finger. She shrugged. "You haven't told Jill," she pointed out.

He traced the thick line of his eyebrow. "No, I haven't," he agreed, and drank slowly, letting the scotch coat his tongue. His dad had once told him that drinking good scotch was an art, and had explained, with great care, the proper drinking protocol; but Grayson had never been able to quite remember those steps.

Annette fiddled with her glass. "William and I—it's not easy to just walk away from something like that. Uprooting Sherry's entire life..."

"This your way of breaking up with me?" He laughed sardonically.

Annette's eyes shot wide, and, the words sort of jumbling together, she said, "No, no, that's not it at all." She shook her head, adding, "I just need a good exit strategy, I guess. William, he's volatile. You know that."

"He touches you or Sherry, I'll fuck him up."

The waitress returned with their food; it smelled really good, and the meat was still sizzling. The plates were hot, their waitress warned, and she used a hand-towel to set their meals on the table. Grayson's London broil came with a baked potato with all the works, and Annette's salmon steak came with garlic-roasted broccoli. Their waitress told them to enjoy the meal, then bustled away to another table.

Grayson dug in; it tasted just as good as it smelled, and the meat was so tender, it melted in his mouth. "How's your dinner?" he asked, around another mouthful of steak.

"Really good," Annette said, and forked a piece of broccoli, and a sliver of salmon, into her mouth.

They made small-talk about Sherry and how she was doing in school, about movies and popular television shows. Halfway through their meal, and a conversation that had somehow shifted to politics, a sudden commotion broke out, and Grayson saw a man stumbling from the direction of the bathrooms, the collar of his sports jacket and white-button up soaked with blood. He was clutching his neck, gurgling something to the waitress.

One guy, who was, apparently, an off-duty paramedic, immediately went to stabilize the victim. He pressed a hand-towel, which the waitress had provided, against the man's neck. It was soaked within seconds. The paramedic told the waitress to bring him another, and she did.

The guy who had, presumably, attacked the man came stumbling out of the bathrooms like a cartoon mummy, arms outstretched. His skin sick and pale, mouth smeared with blood. A strip of the victim's neck dangled from his mouth like a bloody noodle.

Grayson took out his service gun, announced he was a cop and flashed his badge, and he told the attacker to freeze. The man ignored him and stumbled on. Rolled one of his ankles, and it snapped. Dragging his broken ankle, the man soldiered on; he didn't seem to notice he'd hurt himself.

Grayson told him to freeze again. The man ignored him. He suddenly careened toward a woman, and she screamed. The man tried to bite her. Grayson shot him, and he went down, and didn't get back up. The woman started sobbing; a man consoled her.

The paramedics came; they loaded the guy who'd been bitten onto the gurney. Grayson gave his statement to the cops, once they showed up, and then they took statements from the other patrons. The woman who'd nearly been bitten said he'd saved her life, and that she was grateful.

Annette had watched this all go down in stunned silence, and when she'd given her statement and they were finally allowed to leave, she didn't say anything.

"It's gotta be drugs," Grayson told her, once they were in the car. "Something like this happened earlier, when I was on patrol. Same thing. Bit a guy." He saw the expression on Annette's face, a pale oval in the dashboard lights, and he squinted at her, one hand on the steering wheel, and said, "You know something."

"No, I don't know anything," Annette said, staring out the windshield. "I just—can we go? Please?" She looked at him then, pinpricks of dashboard light reflected in her eyes. "And don't prod me about it," she added, like a mother telling their child to stop begging for that toy they wanted. "Okay?"

Grayson nodded. "Okay," he said, "I won't prod you."

Back at his apartment, they stripped off their clothes and came together in a grunt of mutual satisfaction, and thrust and rolled against each other in the cool darkness of his bedroom. And then they'd fallen asleep, and he'd never once asked her what had happened at Grill 13.


	9. Portend

Over the next couple of months, a certain tension had been mounting since the Arklay op, and Grayson felt it was near its breaking point. Felt like something was about to happen, like life had been busy assembling improvised bombs and was finally ready to deploy.

His dad had had another stroke. Alfred's psychosis had gotten worse, somehow. Jill was getting suspicious. Irons, ever since their confrontation, had been breathing down his neck. And Annette had become one of the mole-people; she'd been down in NEST for weeks, even had a cot there.

He'd taken some time off from the precinct to keep his sanity from calving, and busied himself with his movie and music hobby, and the occasional day-trip to somewhere that wasn't Raccoon City.

Today, that somewhere was Stoneville. He'd initially planned to drive up alone, but Jill convinced him to accompany her, Barry, Rebecca, and Chris on a fishing trip on the lake. Chris was going to Europe soon, so he'd rented a nice boat from the docks—a last hurrah before his long departure. _D_ _isposable Heroes_ blared from a chromed boombox on the deck. Barry and Chris were already several beers deep, laughing and casting their lines. Rebecca and Jill sat in deckchairs, sipping cocktails.

The lake was nice and calm today, like blue glass under a blue sky. But he couldn't really enjoy the nice weather; his brain kept circling Annette, what she was doing down in NEST. Kept circling what had happened in Grill 13. The official report stated the guy had been a violent junkie, but something echoed hollowly about that. You didn't look the way that guy did from drugs, at least no drugs that Grayson knew of.

"You gonna keep staring at the water?"

He looked at Jill. She wore a blue bikini, and though it looked nice, it would have probably looked nicer on Annette. Though that wasn't to say Jill was unattractive; she had the sort of toned, slim body he liked. But it wasn't Annette's body, didn't have that mature quality to it.

"Sorry," he said, and pulled up a deckchair. Rebecca and Jill were dealing cards on an upturned beer crate. "What's the game?"

"Shithead," Rebecca said, grinning. She sipped her cocktail, something violently pink.

"Aren't you too young to drink?"

Rebecca shrugged. "Who cares?" she said, and started her game of Shithead with Jill. "We probably won't even have jobs in a month or so."

"Makes you say that?"

Irons," Jill said, and leaned against him. "There's talk he wants to dismantle what's left of S.T.A.R.S. No surprise. Guy's dirty, I fucking know it, and he's just covering up for Umbrella."

 _He is covering up_ , Grayson thought. "Maybe," he said, noncommittally. He watched them flip cards, toss them into a little pile. He thought about asking them how to play the game, but figured there was no point; card games bored him. In Antarctica, when they'd gotten really bored, which had been pretty often, Alexia and him had played chess, and he'd never beaten her. She'd always outmaneuver him with fancy techniques had names like _Albin Countergambit_ and _Alekhine's Defense_ _,_ grinning like a smug asshole the whole time. But damn, he missed that smug asshole smile.

Another regret to add to that growing list, he decided; he'd wanted to beat Alexia at least once at chess. He'd even bought a book on chess strategies, but hadn't understood any of the explanations, and so he'd given up. The book still sat, neglected, on his shelf at home. Maybe he'd read it later. Maybe he'd even beat Alfred, and that was good enough.

"You okay?" Rebecca's voice stabbed into his thoughts like a stiletto.

"He does that," Jill said, and did a thing with the cards. "Gets lost in his thoughts."

"Yeah," he said, and nodded. Then, to Rebecca, "You ever go on that date with Clancy?"

"I did," Rebecca said, giggling. She had a nice smile, Grayson decided. "He's a nice guy, and he's cute. But I dunno, he's way older than me." She shrugged, tossed a card onto the growing pile between Jill and her.

Grayson watched the game, not understanding. Felt like he was fifteen again, watching Alexia work her chess-magic, snatching his pieces in smooth, fluid moves. Then he thought about Annette, how the only card-game she'd ever played was Solitaire, sometimes War, if it was the two of them.

 _Annette_. He frowned, a tense twist in his chest. _What the fuck are you doing do_ _w_ _n there_?

He liked to imagine Annette was just sitting there in her laboratory, playing Solitaire at her desk, things floating in phosphorescent tubes all around her, and she was probably blaring New Order or Talking Heads. But she wasn't paying attention to the tube-things, just the cards, and her mouth was pressing into a thin line, that crease in her forehead she always got whenever she concentrated too hard...

He shook his head, realizing his mind was tumbling away, back into the chasm where his thoughts lived.

Jill eyed him, suspicious.

"I'm gonna get a beer," Grayson said, and went to get a beer.

Chris and Barry were laughing, a plastic cooler between their bare feet. Both of them were slightly sunburned, dressed in shorts and Cuban shirts. Chris had this habit of wearing his sunglasses backwards, like he was watching Grayson from the back of his skull.

"You good, Harman?" Chris said. He wasn't a bad guy. A little aggressive when he didn't need to be—he'd punched a guy at the precinct, not long ago, over something stupid—but otherwise, he was a good dude. Grayson liked him.

"Yeah," Grayson said, and opened the cooler, fishing a cold bottle from the half-melted ice. "Just a little hot."

"Should go swimmin'," Barry said, face flushed from too much alcohol and sun. He laughed, louder than he needed to, and drunkenly cast his line into the lake. "S'nice lake, kid. Nothin' weird innit. 'Cept watersnakes, maybe, but you leave them alone, they leave you alone." His words kind of slurred together, so Grayson had to listen very carefully to parse what was being said.

"Not a fan of snakes," Grayson said, and went below deck.

Below deck was pretty nice, though he had to sort of stoop to avoid smacking his head on the ceiling. Had an area with a bed, a kitchenette, a table with a lounge-sofa upholstered in pale imitation leather. A bathroom too, though it barely fit one person.

Jill came down. "You know," she said, conversationally, "I don't really feel like playing cards."

"Jill," he said, and jimmied the cap off his beer with the bottle-opener, "what about everyone else?"

"They'll leave us alone." She giggled, and then the giggle died and she said, seriously, "We haven't had sex in forever, Grayson. Is there something going on?" Jill came closer, stared for several uncomfortable moments. "Are you gay?" she asked, with gravitas. "You and Alfred? Look, I know he's an asshole, but I understand we don't choose who we—"

"I'm not gay," he said, and sipped his beer.

"Is there something wrong with me?"

He shook his head. "No," he said, and meant it. _Nothing at all_ _,_ he wanted to say _._ _You're gorgeous, and any guy would be lucky to have you._ He said nothing. _You're_ _just_ _not w_ _ho I want_. Though Grayson would be lying if he said some small part of him didn't want Jill, wanted badly to love her.

"Don't tell me you're gonna pull some shit line like, 'it's me, not you'."

"I'm not." Grayson finished his beer.

She kissed him deeply, then, and coaxed him toward the bed. And then he was down on the cool sheets, and Jill was straddling him, peeling off the blue bikini and dropping the pieces to the floor, her hands quickly working him out of his jeans.

But as their bodies rolled together on the bed, the hard nubs of her pink nipples pushing against his chest, her skin slippery with sweat, and he was thrusting, hard, inside the sucking cling of her, Grayson thought of nobody but Annette.

The next day, Grayson was sitting in his apartment and staring at his phone, hoping it would ring, that Annette would finally call and tell him she was coming over. But the phone had been silent, excluding a few calls from Jill, which he had ignored.

Still, he was resiliently hopeful. Annette had to come up for air at some point. She had to breathe real air again, not that oxygen-enriched shit they pumped through vents in NEST. She liked the sun; she'd want to see it again. _Right_?

He imagined her, then, squatting in the dark, a pale, skeletal thing, her eyes reflecting the light like some nocturnal animal. She was clutching a glowing tube, the shape her research always took in his mind, in her bony hands.

Grayson shook his head. He took the chess book, titled _Masterful Maneuvers:_ _A Guide to Chess Strategy_ , off the shelf above his bed, a brown paperback with a stock-photo of a chessboard printed on the cover. It had been written in 1978, and the pages smelled, faintly, of something that reminded him of bananas and thrift-stores. The author, who looked like someone who had worked for IBM in 1978, smiled at him in monochrome on the back, his eyes magnified by prescription glasses, framed by long 1970s hair.

He started to read.

An hour later, the phone rang. It was Alfred.

"Just letting you know Scott's recovered," Alfred said, and he sounded tired. "And also," he said, like someone meditating on which words to use next, "you should be on your guard, Grayson."

"That's good. But on my guard?"

"It's simply gossip, so take it with a grain of salt. But there's supposedly been issues in NEST."

"Issues?" He laid the book on his coffee-table, next to this month's issue of _Electronic Gaming Monthly_. "What kinda issues, Alfred?"

"My superiors wouldn't say, but they were very concerned. I tried to poke around, but nothing came of it." Grayson heard him sip something, the faint clink of ice. "That's usually a portend, when the people in the labs are nervous."

"Anything else, Alfred?"

"No," Alfred said. Another slow sip.

"Well, appreciate it," Grayson said, and meant it. "Anyway, I need to go. Thanks for the tip, Alfred." He hung up, grabbed his keys, and went to his car.


	10. It's in the Air

He waited outside the Umbrella building. When he'd asked the front-desk clerk about Annette, they'd told him NEST wasn't taking any visitors today and turned him out.

They'd been having bad thunderstorms lately, and tonight was no exception. The sky pissed waterfalls. Thunder boomed in the clouds, almost always followed by a sudden crack of lightning that almost always caught him off-guard.

He smoked another cigarette, watching people coming and going. The entrance of the building was recessed, so it kept him mostly sheltered from the storm, the occasional squall tossing rain into his face aside. People huddled under umbrellas and rushed to the curb, and they rode away in taxis, or cars chauffeured by tired-looking guys in suits.

There was no guarantee Annette would even show up; she'd pretty much been living down in NEST. But Grayson didn't know what else to do. She wasn't taking calls—couldn't take calls, that far underground—and she hadn't visited his apartment in weeks. Maybe months. He'd lost track.

At about half-past eleven o'clock, by some fucking miracle, Grayson saw Annette. She looked dead. "Annette," Grayson yelled, jogging to catch up with her, his shoes splashing through deep puddles reflecting light.

She was smoking a cigarette. Turned slowly to look at him. "Grayson?" she said, like she couldn't believe he was real.

Grayson hugged her, almost knocked Annette over. Her cigarette burned his skin, but he didn't care.

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry," she said, and took the cigarette out of her mouth, dropping it to the ground. She looked at the little burn on his neck. "Are you okay? I just wasn't—I'm so sorry."

"Forget it, it's nothing," Grayson said, and shook his head. "Just a little burn."

She awkwardly hugged him back; but Annette's hugs had always been awkward. Like she couldn't decide where to put her arms, how long to hug him, whether it was okay to do in public or not, or maybe she was just scared to attract attention. Affection, to Annette, and like it had been with Alexia, was a hypothesis, something that needed to be experimented with in several different ways before she could arrive at anything conclusive. "I'm sorry I haven't been in touch," Annette said, burying her face in his shirt. "Your shirt smells good. Or is that your cologne?"

Before he could answer, Grayson saw a familiar figure emerging from the Umbrella building, gangling toward the street, a calfskin briefcase in his hand. William. He was lighting a cigarette, his thin body lost in a dark raincoat that was too big for him, the collar upturned like some noir detective.

Grayson quickly released Annette and stepped away, more for her sake than his; he didn't give a shit about William or his feelings, but understood Annette's situation was complicated. And whenever he could spare Annette of William's bullshit, he did.

"What the fuck is he doing here?" William asked. His cigarette was slightly bent at the filter.

Annette shot Grayson a nervous, apologetic look, and kissed William. It bothered Grayson more than it should have, but he didn't do anything. Just stood there like a good boy. But in his mind, an elaborate scenario played, involving William's face and the hood of Grayson's car, and the two making repeated contact.

William kissed her back, but to say it was half-assed was too generous. It was like he did it because he'd been conditioned to do it, and not because he genuinely enjoyed kissing his wife. Or maybe William did enjoy it, but he was so emotionally stunted that it was hard to tell.

"So why're you here, Harman?" William asked. "Ashford doesn't work here. And the other one's dead."

Grayson tensed. Annette watched him, worried. "Annette wanted to talk to me about Sherry..." He started to cobble a story together in his head. "Something about a presentation?" Grayson looked at Annette: _play along, please_.

"Oh—oh, right," Annette said, and smacked her forehead. "Sherry wanted to know if you'd come talk at her school. D.A.R.E week is starting, I think."

"You had this asshole come out here just to talk about that?"

"I was passing by," Grayson lied. "Saw Annette coming out of the building, and remembered her mentioning the D.A.R.E thing. So I stopped."

William regarded them both with suspicion. He was a weasel, but weasels were smart. Still, Grayson was pretty sure he didn't suspect the affair; William would have said something about it. He wasn't the kind of guy who could pull off revenge-served-cold. Too impetuous. "Right," he said, and grabbed Annette's hand. Grayson started fantasizing about slamming William's face against the hood of his car again. "Come on, Annette." William dragged her away.

"Go ahead, drag her away," Grayson said to himself. "She loves me, asshole. Not you."

Later, Annette showed up at his apartment, and they made love for hours. It wasn't until they'd finished their last round in the bed that he decided to ask her about NEST, what was going on down there.

She sat up in the bed, clutching the sheets to her chest. Smoking. But she was careful, always made sure the embers wound up in the ash-tray, not on the linen. "I know this isn't what you wanna hear, but I can't—"

"Annette, I'm tired of the goddamn runaround. And when you're not giving me the runaround, you're not saying anything at all. Disappearing into NEST for weeks." He was sitting in bed too, the sheets bunched around his waist, a smattering of smudged pink lip-gloss across his chest, neck, and jaw.

She sighed, smoked, blew a cloud, and smoked again, this time exhaling through her nose. Flicked ashes into the tray. "We've been… experimenting with a virus. Rather, a strain of it. Lots of potential benefits, but the cons are slowly outpacing the pros."

"Do you really have to do this ambiguous shit?"

"Look," Annette said, and finished her cigarette, "my ass is on the line, Grayson. You grew up with the Ashfords. You know how Umbrella works. 'Loose lips sink ships'."

Grayson frowned. She wasn't wrong; Umbrella had elevated secret-keeping to an artform. "Sorry," he said, and leaned against his headboard.

"All I know is William's losing it," Annette said, staring into the middle-distance. She brought her knees up under the sheets, wrapped her arms around her legs. "The investigation committee is getting impatient. Very impatient. William's been making deals with people outside the company, but hasn't really told me the specifics."

"So for a couple of bucks, the asshole's gonna endanger you and Sherry?"

"He's not even thinking in those terms, and that's the goddamn worst part," Annette said, her forehead creasing. Her eyes turned pink and wet around the edges. A single tear streaked her cheek. "I get it, he doesn't even consider me in these things. But Sherry? The least he could fucking do is consider Sherry. He's her goddamn father."

Automatically, Grayson slipped his arm around her. And it reminded him of this time he'd done the same to Alexia. He'd found her crying in her laboratory, not long after the twins had found out about Code: Veronica. He'd sat beside her then, had slipped his arm around her just like this, and she'd ugly-cried for hours. That night had been the only time he'd ever seen Alexia cry like that.

But this wasn't Alexia, he told himself. This was Annette, and they were two different people. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. She huddled against his side, kissed his ribs. "But I'm lucky," Annette said at length. "I have you. I love you. And that's why I want you to leave Raccoon, Grayson."

* * *

That September, he understood why Annette had wanted him to leave Raccoon City. Why Alfred had called it a portend. So much tension in the air that it could suffocate an elephant.

The precinct was thick with bad nerves.

S.T.A.R.S had officially dissolved, its members re-assigned to S.W.A.T. Chris had gone on his indefinite vacation to Europe; Barry talked about moving to Canada; Rebecca wanted to possibly transition out of law-enforcement. Clancy and Rebecca were seeing each other now, too, and kept talking about moving to Chicago.

Jill was the only one who didn't seem to have any plans beyond work-another-day. She'd been military up until S.T.A.R.S, and now she wasn't military, and she no longer even had S.T.A.R.S. And she didn't seem to fit too well into S.W.A.T; they were a tight-knit group of assholes, real cliquish.

He found her wallowing by the vending machine in the east hallway. "I think I'm gonna go to Japan for a few weeks," she said as he walked over. "See my extended family."

"You barely know them outside your cousins," he reminded her, hooking his thumbs in his duty belt.

"I just… I dunno, I wanna go someplace that isn't here. Somewhere far away." Jill looked at him. "You should come with me, Grayson. It'd be fun, and you could use the vacation."

"Not really interested in going to Japan," he told her.

"Don't tell me you'd rather go to England, where it rains all the damn time."

"Alfred's gotta mansion there. I can't stay at a mansion in Japan."

Jill sighed, sipped her soda.

"Hey, Jill."

She looked at him.

"You feel like something's about to happen?"

"Yeah," Jill said, nodding slowly. "It's in the air."


	11. Scooby Doo Shit

Maybe it had been in the air, or maybe it had spread some other way, but Raccoon City was in the middle of a pandemic. People were getting sick. The hospitals were filling up quicker than they could have ever prepared for. People were fleeing enmasse. The RPD strained to respond to calls, to evacuate remaining citizens, its forces stretched too thin or gone entirely…

And when the craziness had hit its crescendo, spilled death into the streets, the city washing away in a flood of cannibalism… Grayson was stuck. He'd retreated to the RPD to shore up the defenses there, on foot; the streets were too thick with cars and bodies, and so driving had been impossible after a certain point.

Citizens who'd sought refuge within the precinct's walls huddled under the empty marble gaze of The Goddess, an electric buzz of tension and nerves and fear in the air. A small complement of cops had stayed behind; most of the force had been wiped out by the wave of cannibals who'd come staggering out of the Sharks stadium, ill-equipped to handle that many attackers, and others had been wiped out in other places, beyond a sea of hungry infected.

They'd done their best to convert the RPD into a kind of hospital and living space; but it was a rough job comprised of surplus and makeshift cots, gurneys, boxes and crates. The "hospital" was partitioned from the "living space" by plastic dividers. EMTs, and a doctor and a few nurses who'd survived the hoard at Raccoon General, rushed between injured patients there, and did what they could. In the living space, he heard someone consoling a woman who'd lost her husband, their dialog punctuated by the agonized wails of a man whose leg had been ripped off at the knee.

It smelled like death and antiseptic in the precinct, and blood. Mostly blood. Grayson went over to Marvin. "This is fucking unreal," he said, and sat down beside him.

"Yeah," Marvin said, and took a long drag on his cigarette. Smoke curled away from his lips, his nose. "I don't usually smoke. Quit six years ago. But this shit's got me stressed." He stubbed it out in an ashtray on a crate that served as a table.

Elliot came over. A thin white guy with a shag of dirty blonde hair, still in his uniform. Part of his Kevlar vest was spattered with blood. "Harman," he said, and looked at him, "you were studying the precinct, right? The secret passage."

Marvin looked between them. "That's right," he said, his tired gaze settling on Grayson. "You were looking into that."

Grayson shook his head. "I was. I… don't know what happened to my notebook. Maybe I dropped it somewhere, when I ran over here."

The little muscle in Elliot's jaw twitched. "You dropped it." He suddenly grabbed Grayson by the shirt, his eyes hard and angry, and very scared. Grayson didn't fight back; Edwards just wanted to vent. "You fucking _dropped_ it? Oh no, no, no, Harman." His voice shook, went low. "This isn't how it's gonna go down. No, this fucking isn't."

"Get off him, Edwards," Marvin said, and shoved Elliot away. "Bad enough we got those things outside tearing our guys apart. But this?" He shook his head. "No, this ain't going to fucking fly. We're all these people got—" and Marvin waved his hand toward the civilians in the lobby "—and you're not gonna do this, understand? We got to work together."

Elliot stepped away. He inhaled with his nose, exhaled with his mouth. "Where'd you drop it, Harman?"

"Maybe outside," Grayson said. "Near Flower Street. Where my car is." He'd been running, not paying attention to anything around him but the way forward. Not thinking about anything other than Annette, how he was going to reach her underground, and whether or not Sherry was safe. He hadn't been thinking about his notebook.

"Out there," Elliot repeated, and pointed toward the entrance. His face glistened with sweat, like someone had laminated it. A man, not the one without the leg, howled. "You dropped it out there?"

"I was trying to get back here," Grayson told him.

"Then I guess you better go get it," Elliot said.

"He ain't going anywhere, Edwards," Marvin said, his eyes like hard stones. "We need to sit tight. Wait for the military. We got no other choice. Going out there? It's fucking suicide."

"Then I'll go fucking get it," Elliot said, and he started walking away. "Fuck this."

"Edwards! Get your ass back here," Marvin shouted.

But Elliot was gone.

"That crazy stupid fuck," Marvin said.

The man without the leg screamed, then never screamed again.

Grayson helped Marvin bury the legless man in the yard outside the precinct's main doors. An impromptu cemetery had sprung up there, the graves marked by wooden sticks and two-by-fours, or not at all. Beyond the tall wrought-iron gates around the RPD, the infected wailed and rattled the fence, hungry for warm people-meat. Their rotting faces looked stonewashed in the floodlights, blood glittering around their mouths like liquid ruby. It was hard to imagine that, a few hours ago, those things had been people. Living. People who had liked things. People who had had hobbies and jobs and lovers.

Clancy was on guard-duty at the gate. They'd locked the gate, but kept a guard posted on it around the clock. The precinct had put out an announcement for all remaining citizens to shelter at the RPD, but Grayson wasn't sure how many people it had actually reached.

"I'm glad Rebecca wasn't in town," Clancy said to them, as they finished shoveling the dirt back into the legless man's—his driver's license had identified him as Robert Hobbs—grave. "But I'm fucking worried about Sherry." A cigarette smoldered between his lips. His uniform was stained in a way that suggested someone had bunched the fabric between their bloody fingers. He paced back and forth, with a fresh limp.

"Me too," Grayson said, stabbing the spade of the shovel into the soft dirt. It started to rain.

"Jill wasn't here at least," Marvin said to Grayson, the shoulders of his uniform flecked with dark spots from the rain. "Bet you're happy, Harman."

He thought about Annette and Sherry. "Yeah." He looked at Clancy. Asked, "Did Edwards actually leave?"

"Stormed right out," Clancy said, shaking his head. "Tried to tell him it was a stupid fucking idea, but the guy wasn't listening." He gestured at the infected with the barrel of his riot shotgun, and said, "Popped a few shots off at these assholes—I covered Edwards—and he went off, toward Flower. He's probably not coming back."

"Wouldn't be too sure of that," Marvin said, standing on the steps of the RPD. "Edwards is a good cop. Determined. Rash, sure, but I think he'll come back." He paused, then said to Clancy, "You don't open the goddamn gate again, Dunn. Not for people leaving. Only for people coming in. Got it?"

"Yeah. Sorry, Lieutenant."

"Haven't seen Irons," Grayson said to Marvin, once they were back inside. "Find that a little weird."

"Irons is in his office, I think," Marvin said, and sat down on the couch again. Things had quieted down; most of the civilians were either sleeping, or doped up with painkillers. The people still awake were too exhausted to do much else than sit there, vacantly staring into space.

"Doing what?"

"Talking to the people who are going to get us out of here," Marvin said, and wiped his face with a terrycloth rag he'd pinched from a custodial cart.

Grayson doubted that. If anything, Irons was negotiating with Umbrella to get his own fat ass out of town. But what kind of leverage could Irons have to make the deal happen? He was no longer useful to Umbrella. Raccoon City was gone, and the RPD was on its last and, Grayson somehow knew with a clenched certainty, final leg. "I should go see him," he said. "He's dirty, Marvin. He's up to something."

"Maybe he is dirty. But what's it matter now?" Marvin looked at him. "You saw Raccoon, Grayson. We might not even get out. Civilians are our priority right now. If Irons can get people here, sooner these fine folks can get to safety."

Grayson looked at The Goddess statue, and said, "I'm pretty sure the secret passage is under that statue. Still don't know how to open it, though." He stared at the three empty hollows carved on the statue's pedestal, thinking. "Maybe."

"Maybe what?" Marvin followed his eyes.

"Was anything ever in those hollows before?"

"No," Marvin said, "they've always been empty."

Grayson chewed the inside of his cheek.

"Harman, seriously."

"Maybe Irons removed them," Grayson said, and walked over to the statue, running his hands over the cool marble, probing for some kind of switch.

"Seriously, this ain't some Scooby Doo shit, Harman. That secret passage bullshit is just that. Bullshit."

"Not as bullshit as you'd think." The mansion in Antarctica had secret passageways, and so did the mansion on Rockfort. "I saw papers. From when it was a museum," he added, failing to find anything weird about the statue. Grayson sighed. He looked at Marvin. "Anyway, if it was such bullshit, why'd you let Edwards go after my notebook?"

Marvin opened his mouth, closed it. His lips became a thin, hard line. "Sounds like you're speaking from experience," he said. "You have experience with secret passageways, Harman? You been in some Scooby Doo shit?"

"No Scooby Doo shit." He smiled at a memory, and shared a little anecdote: "Daughter of the nobles I'd worked for hated that show." Grayson looked at the statue's placard, which stated it had been an anonymous donation to the Raccoon City Museum of Art, and that the sculptor was unknown. "And I already told you: I read papers. In one of the storerooms."

"Alexia, right? You don't talk much about your time before the RPD."

"Yeah, Alexia," Grayson said, and sat down beside Marvin. Marvin passed him a bag of vending machine chips. Opening the bag, Grayson ate the semi-stale chips without enthusiasm. "Not much to talk about, I guess," he said, around a mouthful of potato shards. "She's been dead a long time."

"Not much to talk about?" Marvin opened his own bag of stale chips. Said, "Don't look that way to me. You keep her picture in your wallet."

"We had this thing. Teenagers. First love, you know?"

"First loves are the hardest to let go," Marvin agreed, munching chips. Then he a can of soda, also from a vending machine. "My wife was my high-school sweetheart. I worked too much, and she ain't liked that much. We fought a lot because of that. This job? Really strains your relationships, Harman." Marvin passed a root beer to Grayson.

"What happened to her?" He opened the root beer and drank; it was lukewarm. "If you don't mind my asking."

"Divorced. But we're on good terms," Marvin said, and smiled with white teeth. "I still see my daughter all the time. Still involved in her life. Go to all her school things, take her out places. And that's why I'm not gonna die in this shithole. She's got a recital coming up, and I'm gonna be there, and I'm gonna buy her ice cream afterward."

Grayson smiled, sipped his warm root beer and ate his stale chips.

"That's why I don't want you fucking up shit with Jill," Marvin said suddenly, and looked at him. "She's a good woman, Harman. Real good. And she loves you. Blind man could see that." His dark eyes seemed to stare into Grayson, seeing something there. "So whatever shit you're doing with this other woman? The one you're always on the phone with when Jill ain't around? Knock it the fuck off, man."

Grayson said nothing.

Marvin nodded slowly. "Ah," he said, "I get it now. Then be a fucking man. Grow some goddamn balls and break it off with her, instead of stringing her along. You love this other woman, you tell Jill that. You owe her some fucking honesty, Harman."

"You're right," Grayson said. "I do owe her that."

"Damn right."

"That's why I wanna find this secret passage," Grayson told him. "It has to go underground, right? She's there. The other woman."

"Now why the fuck would she be down there?"

"I don't know," Grayson lied. "Just have a feeling."


	12. I Didn't Want To

Angry they couldn't get more than the police were willing to ration, a group of survivors killed a cop. They took her gun, took what supplies they could carry, and then they retreated deeper into the precinct, barricading themselves behind materials they'd stolen from a construction site (parts of the RPD had been in continuous repair for months), and furniture.

Another group, also angry at the rules, tried their luck outside; they'd barely made it beyond the gate before the zombies had descended on them like starving hyenas. Nothing left but a woman's bloodstained sneaker, her gnawed foot still inside it, and anatomical jigsaw pieces of what had once been whole bodies.

Thankfully, Marvin and him had managed to secure the gate before the infected had flooded through. Crisis averted.

"This shit is gettin' ridiculous," Marvin told him inside the lobby, clicking through several security feeds on a department-issue laptop cased in heavy reinforced plastic. The survivors, the ones who'd barricaded themselves with stolen materials, fought among themselves in fuzzy monochrome.

The audio wasn't too good, but Grayson was pretty sure they were squabbling over food. They'd gotten away with a few cases of nonperishables, and a crate of medical supplies. And since they'd been unwilling to comply with rationing, they were probably running low on stuff, and so tempers were frothing. "Hate it say it, but serves them right," Grayson said, and shook his head.

"Normally I'd say, 'That ain't somethin' a cop should say', but in the case of these motherfuckers?" Marvin shook his head, clicked off the display, brought up another camera-feed of the east hallway, where nothing happened. "They killed Taylor. Fuck 'em. Let 'em starve. Liabilities anyway."

Clancy wasn't looking too good. His limp had gotten worse; he could barely walk anymore. So he sat there beside Marvin, staring at nothing with sunken eyes. "Taylor was a good cop," he agreed, wincing and sweating profusely.

"You're not looking too hot, Clancy," Grayson said. It was just the three of them now. The assholes behind the barricades had stolen the last of their medicine.

"Been standing in the rain, in the middle of September. It's cold as shit outside," Clancy said, and coughed. He shivered, then curled up on the upholstered couch like a child with a stomachache. "It's probably the fucking flu, and those assholes took the meds. Not even a bottle of goddamn safsprin to get me through." The hem of his right pant-leg was crusted with blood.

"What's with the blood on your pants?" Grayson asked.

"Probably stepped in something," Clancy said, and coughed again, hugging himself. "God, I really could use some pain-killers right now. Some adravil to settle this stomachache would be great."

"Things ain't lookin' great, Harman," Marvin said, abandoning the laptop and checking his gun. "We're low on ammo. Chief's disappeared. Military don't seem to be comin'. But mama didn't raise no goddamn quitter." He looked over at Clancy and said, "You'll be all right, Dunn. Haley wants to see her daddy again, and you're gonna make sure she does."

"I thank God every fuckin' second goes by that she's not in Raccoon City," Clancy said, convulsing. In his hand, he clutched the tiny gold cross he wore around his neck. "Her and her mom got outta Raccoon with the first wave of evacuees. Before shit got really bad." He frowned, his grip around the cross tightening. "But Sherry, my little cousin? I don't know, and I feel fuckin' shitty I don't know. Aunt Annette always told her to come here, if she was in trouble. But she's only twelve, Lieutenant." Clancy started to weep gently, and Grayson couldn't remember a time he'd ever seen Clancy cry. "What's a fuckin' twelve-year-old gonna do out there?" he asked mournfully, releasing the cross, letting it hang limp. "All those goddamn zombies? Jesus, Lieutenant. She was only fuckin' twelve..."

"Enough of that shit," Marvin said, holstering his gun. He stood. "You don't know if Sherry's dead, Dunn. She's a smart kid. I'm sure she's okay."

Annette had been down in NEST, Grayson thought. Maybe she'd brought Sherry down there. Maybe they were eating burgers in the NEST cafeteria, laughing about something dumb…

He helped Marvin bury Officer Taylor, and then found himself on gate-duty. Though Grayson didn't think anyone would come, Marvin was still convinced that people were out there, and they needed shelter. But shelter was just about all they could offer. Most of the food was gone. The meds were gone. The doctors and the EMTs were gone. And most of the cops were gone, too. Elliot, that courageous but stupid motherfucker, still hadn't returned from his retrieval mission, and the others were dead or they had, through some stroke of luck, gotten out; but Grayson doubted they'd gotten far.

He blandly observed the floodlit faces of the undead, their glaucous eyes vibrating with the same nameless frequency he'd observed in the eyes of junkies hurting for their next score. Found it interesting, these zombies, how single-minded they were. They'd been rattling the fence for hours, wailing in the dark, no closer to their food. But they persisted.

If enough of them battered the fence, he thought, the thing would come down. And more of them came, steadily, each hour, and the possibility—the very real possibility—that they'd crumple the fence like chicken-wire, sat like a huge rock in his stomach. Like a huge aggregate of worry and fear. He'd seen how those things tear apart their food; Grayson didn't want to go out like that.

Gunshots—two—muffled by the thick stonework of the precinct. Grayson loped up the stairs and shouldered through the door, tightly clutching Clancy's riot shotgun, his finger twitching in the trigger-guard, the stock digging into his tricep.

Clancy was dead, sprawled forward on the ground, half his head blown away, a slow-growing pool of blood spreading from him.

Marvin stood over Clancy. The side of his uniform shiny and wet with blood. "He fuckin' bit me," Marvin said, grimacing. "I'm—I'm sorry, Harman." He slouched, clutching his side, blood seeping between his brown fingers. "I didn't wanna shoot him. He didn't give me a choice. I made the mistake of trying to reason with h—it. It." He winced and put his gun away. "It's not him anymore. It's not Clancy."

Grayson felt something. A complicated, chimeric emotion that was both sadness and numbness, relief (Clancy no longer had to suffer) and disbelief. He eased his grip on the shotgun, letting it settle on its strap. He'd known Clancy since they were kids. And now Clancy was gone.

"Nothing we can do," Grayson said, steeling himself. He could mourn later, when he was far away from Raccoon City. But not right now, not when shit was going down, and Annette and Sherry were somewhere in the mess.

"We'll bury him," Marvin said. The side of his shirt had been torn away, the skin underneath shredded by human teeth. Clancy had gotten a strip of Martin's skin, had torn it back so it hung like a flap.

Grayson shook his head. "I'll bury him. That wound looks nasty."

"I'll be fine."

"We need to treat it," Grayson said.

"Assholes behind the barricades took our meds."

"Don't need meds," Grayson said. "Just some duct tape and cloth."


	13. The Man-Thing

He retrieved the duct-tape from his locker in the east office. For the bandage itself, Grayson had to improvise with an RPD T-shirt. Found an empty gallon jug, which, after he'd washed his hands, he'd filled with lukewarm tap-water from the bathroom. Then he'd made his way back to Marvin, jug in hand, the shirt in the other. Found him stretched out on the couch in the lobby.

"Roll over, Lieutenant," Grayson told him. Marvin did.

The wound looked worse up close; Clancy had sunk his teeth real deep, and the tissue was badly inflamed, smelled unpleasantly of overripe almonds. Grayson started to carefully rinse the wound with the water. Marvin flinched, hard. "Just bear with me," he said. "Best I can do without medical shit."

Marvin's long fingers dug into the upholstery as Grayson trickled the lukewarm water into the wound, controlling the flow with minor alterations of his wrist. "God, I don't like the way this feels," Marvin said, squeezing his eyes shut. "Feels like someone's takin' a hot piss in my side. Fuck."

Grayson finished, capped the jug, tore the RPD shirt in half. He used one half to pat the wound dry, the other to dress it. Then duct-taped the makeshift bandage to Marvin's side; a temporary solution, Grayson knew. Without proper care, Marvin might go septic, or if he lost too much blood… Hopefully it kept him alive until someone, maybe the military, came to evac the precinct. Get Marvin some real help. RPD was designated shelter, so someone on the outside had to know about them.

Grayson liked to think that was why Elliot hadn't come back. Because he'd found someone to help them. That somewhere, beyond the military perimeter and the wailing hoards of infected, soldiers were mobilizing.

But he somehow doubted that. There was a certain degree of finality and hopelessness in the air, as though Raccoon City was saying: _this is_ _t_ _he finale_ _._ And the curtain was about to drop on them, forever.

"I'm… I think I need to rest my eyes, Harman," Marvin said, his eyes closing like the heavy curtains he'd imagined dropping on Raccoon City. "I ain't feelin' too hot."

"Lieutenant, don't," Grayson warned, shaking him. "You gotta stay awake."

Marvin's eyes closed. Grayson checked his pulse. Still alive.

"Okay," Grayson said to Marvin, "you sleep."

He went outside; the RPD, after a certain amount of time, had him feeling claustrophobic, in need of air. But some air it was; Raccoon City was a ruin. A smoldering, sizzling, crumbling ruin brimming with car wrecks, debris, and the dead. It made him think of some great machine grinding to a halt, belching smoke and flames as the last of its components cooked and gave out.

Grayson stared at Clancy's grave. He'd fashioned a cross from some branches, and on the horizontal arms he'd hung Clancy's necklace, perfectly symmetrical like a fussy jewelry store display, and he'd placed Clancy's RPD cap on the top of the cross, as if Clancy had just hung it there and, tired from a long shift, laid down to nap.

"Sorry I had to take your ammo and shotgun," he said to the grave, squatting by the fresh pile of wet dirt. "But you don't really need them where you are. Do you, buddy?" Grayson ran a hand back through his damp hair. Frowned. Cold rain pattered on his shoulders and back.

Gunfire startled him; came somewhere from beyond the gate, close.

Grayson stood, readied the shotgun.

More gunfire, but from elsewhere. Farther down the street. Automatic.

A couple zombies near the gate dropped, holes between their eyes. Brad Vickers stood on the other side, fists wrapped around the wrought-iron bars, a look of pure animal fear on his face.

"Let me in, Harman!" he screamed, rattling the gate like a caged ape. "Let me—" Brad gurgled suddenly, something glistening wet intestinal pink from his mouth. It pulled out—some kind of tentacle that reminded him of a prolapse, like a long pink sock—and Brad, his face like a blow-up doll's, sagged stiffly to the ground, his gun clattering to the pavement. The zombies came down on him like a wave.

Some giant man-thing stomped toward the gate. Wore some kind of trench-coat cut from Kevlar. Head like a hunk of rotting cheese, the left eye stapled over with a flap of skin. The other eye was a giant cataract. Its mouth had been skinned, gums glittering red in the floodlights, large white teeth like a nut-cracker's.

The tentacle thing slithered back into the man-thing's sleeve like that disappearing handkerchief trick, the one Joseph had liked to do, in reverse. It only said—growled—one thing: _S.T.A.R.S_.

"Don't fire at it!" Jill came out of nowhere, shouldering through the gate. Dressed in a blue tube-top and black miniskirt. She carried an automatic rifle, the kind that was illegal for civilians to own. "It's only after S.T.A.R.S members, Grayson," she said. "Get the fuck inside."

"Where the fuck did that thing come from?"

"Not sure yet," Jill said, and she rattled off a few shots at the monster. The bullets pinged off the thing's trench-coat; where they did manage to hit skin, they stuck, heightening the image of the man-thing being made of rotting cheese.

"Jill—"

"No time to talk." Jill grabbed his hand and they ran for the door. He could hear the thing starting to sprint behind them, its feet pounding the ground like a pair of sledgehammers.

_S.T.A.R.S._

Then they were inside, cutting a sharp right. Jill led him into the east hallway, the creature right on their ass—and gaining.

_S.T.A.R.S._

They ran blindly, crashing through things and into things, panicking about their slowed momentum; and then they were picking up the pace again, and his heart felt like it wanted to give out. "Why the fuck," he panted, sweating, "are we running _into_ the RPD, and not _away_ from it?"

"Just trust me," she said, and they kept running. The thing swiped at Jill, but she ducked, its massive fist smashing into the wall, cracking it like cheap plywood.

Somehow, they managed to stay ahead of it. Barely. They went upstairs—at one point the fucking thing crashed through the bathroom wall, chipped tile and wood splinters pelting the back of his neck—and then looped downstairs, into the east hallway again.

He understood what Jill was trying to do now; she wanted to lose it. Like this one time he'd been chasing after a guy in a white sedan, and the guy had turned every corner and rode every street in Raccoon City to lose his patrol car…

They ran past the watchman's office for the second time, through the fire-escape door. Down into the courtyard, through another gate, and then they were in front of the RPD again, darting past zombies and running, full-speed, down Ennerdale Street.

Inside an alleyway, they caught their breath, slumping and panting against the wet brickwork of a tattoo parlor.

"Where—where the fuck did you get that gun?" he asked.

"Dead military guy," Jill said, sliding to the ground and sitting there. "Jacket said UBCS."

He sat beside her, panting. But Grayson knew they couldn't linger too long; that monster, whatever the fuck it was, was hunting for Jill. This, he thought, was a temporary reprieve. Grayson looked at her. "You said UBCS?"

"Yeah," she said. "You heard of 'em?"

"No," he lied.

The Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service was, he knew, led by Sergei Vladimir, who was pretty tight with Spencer and Alfred. The UBCS, from what Alfred had told him, were a bunch of war-criminals Umbrella had scouted for suicide missions. They trained on Rockfort with the USS, but the USS had always treated them like shit, and so had Alfred. Grayson had no real opinion of them; he'd kept away from the training facility, for the most part, so his interactions with them had been limited.

But he did agree with Alfred and the USS on one thing: the UBCS, they were all pretty much trigger-happy scum.


	14. Fancy Meeting You Here

"So you're telling me that thing's been following you around."

"Already told you," Jill said, clutching her rifle. "It's after S.T.A.R.S members."

"Okay," he said, "so what's the plan?"

"Getting the fuck out of Raccoon City," Jill said, as they turned into a cluttered alleyway which smelled of piss and rotten cheeseburgers, the brickwork scrawled over in graffiti, some tags which Grayson recognized from repeatedly hauling in the vandals who'd made them. Wet trash bags were heaped against the buildings, on both sides; a dumpster overflowed with someone's discarded furniture, and crumpled fast food bags.

"You actually gotta way out of here?" he asked.

"Not yet," she told him, frowning. "Working on that."

A lone zombie, formerly a woman in jogging clothes, staggered toward them; Jill didn't even waste her ammunition, drawing her S.T.A.R.S knife from its leg-sheathe and stabbing it in the pterion, where the skull was thinnest. It sagged to the concrete with a groan, blood pooling underneath it.

"Okay," he said, stepping over the zombie, "you've got no idea where you're going."

Jill sheathed the knife and looked at him. Her right cheek was flecked with blood, not hers, and grime. "You gotta better idea, smartass?" she asked, slinging the military rifle over her shoulder. "Maybe somewhere you gotta be?" She spread her arms and turned, once, like that scene from Sound of Music, except she wasn't smiling like Julie Andrews, and she might have sang _the city is alive with the sound of screaming_. "Because, far as I can tell, the whole city's fucked."

"Then why are we looking for a way out?" he asked dryly. "If it's too late."

"Fuck off," she huffed, dropping her arms. "I'm just saying you've got nowhere to be, Grayson, so stop acting like you're in some goddamn hurry."

"I _am_ in a goddamn hurry. To get out." To find Annette and Sherry, and then get out, he told himself.

"Then go your own goddamn way," she snapped. Silence, though the occasional far-away gunshot or scream would displace it, carried by the wind. Then she sighed. "Sorry. It's… been rough."

"I know," he said. "Clancy died." He felt something, an emotion, corkscrew in his chest. His jaw tightened. So did his throat. "Marvin shot him," he said. "He turned into one of those… things. Marvin didn't have a choice."

Jill looked genuinely sorry. "I'm so sorry, Grayson. He… was a good cop." Reaching over, she awkwardly squeezed his arm in a well-meaning gesture of support, of comfort and reassurance. "A good dad and friend," she added. "I feel so bad for Haley and Katie… did they…?"

"They got out with the first wave of evacuees," he confirmed, and started walking again. So did Jill. They walked alongside each other, trampling a mulch of garbage, listening to the far-away gunshots and the far-away screams. _Raccoon is alive with the sound of screaming_. Somewhere, a siren or an alarm dopplered, then died.

The radio mounted on his shoulder crackled. "Harman?" It took him a moment to realize it was Marvin.

"Lieutenant," he said to the radio. "Yeah, I'm here."

"You left the precinct?"

Grayson paused. "Yeah."

"Good," Marvin said. "I just came around. Survivors that barricaded themselves in the precinct, they turned. Bunch of zombies crawlin' everywhere. I'm holed up in one of the offices. Edwards came back."

"He have the book?"

"Yeah. Trying to figure out where Irons hid those fuckin' medallions. Looks like there's some Scooby Doo shit after all, Harman."

"Lieutenant Branagh," Jill said, leaning toward the radio. "Just hold on, long as you can. Once we find one of the evac points, we'll send people back for you and Edwards."

"Valentine? You're with Harman? Good. Glad to know you're okay. And don't you worry 'bout Edwards and me. We'll get outta here."

"How's the wound, Lieutenant?" Grayson asked.

"Feels like shit," Marvin said, and Grayson heard him wince. "But I'm holdin'."

"We'll get you help, Marvin," Jill said.

"Just worry 'bout yourselves for now," Marvin said, like a dad who was tired of arguing with his kids. "I'm tough for an old guy." He laughed, but there was pain in the laughter, like it hurt him, and it probably did; his whole side had been chewed up by Clancy. "Hey, Harman," he said, "if Sherry Birkin comes here, I'll radio you."

"I'd appreciate that, Lieutenant," Grayson said, and meant it.

 _S.T.A.R.S_. Stomping. The creaking of leather.

"Going silent," Grayson muttered, and did. He looked around, saw a red-painted fire door beneath a flickering halogen strip. "In there," he said to Jill, and jiggled the handle. Locked. Panic started setting in; the stomping, the creaking of leather, the thing rasping _S.T.A.R.S_ , came closer. "Jill, you keep your jackknife lock pick on you, right?"

"Always," she said, and produced it from a zippered pocket on her leg harness. Flicking it open, she revealed a set of lock picks and started to quickly work the door.

 _S.T.A.R.S_.

"Hurry it up," he said, through his teeth. "If that thing sees us before we hide, we're fucked."

Jill opened the door, and they ran inside, shutting it behind them and locking it.

The stomping was close; the thing was in the alleyway now.

 _S.T.A.R.S._ Right outside the door.

She pressed a finger to her lips, sweat glistening on her face in the sodium lights of what appeared to be a cellar of some kind. A set of concrete stairs went down, into a room cluttered with beer crates and cardboard boxes. Probably the backroom of some liquor store or restaurant, Grayson decided; he recognized this kind of space from his days at The Black Room.

 _S.T.A.R.S_. Lingered for several moments outside the door. Then, slowly, the heavy footsteps receded.

When Jill was sure the monster had gone, she moved, exhaled relief. They went downstairs, hoping they could cut through the front of whatever store this place was the backroom of.

It smelled of stale beer and old blood in the backroom, and something that might have been piss. Among upturned beer crates and several empty bottles sat a dead cop, the body slumped against the wall; an empty shotgun lay across his lap, most of his head spattered on the brickwork.

Something moved, but it wasn't the cop. A Hispanic guy came out from behind a large crate of boxed wine, a military-grade rifle, like the one slung over Jill's shoulder, trained on them, the laser sight trembling in the dank semi-darkness. By the angular looks of him, the guy probably had some Amerindian blood.

"I didn't shoot him," the guy said, with a distinct accent. He was staring at Grayson's uniform. His eyes glittered like beetles in cups of shadow. Wore the tan and green fatigues of a UBCS soldier. "My name's Carlos Oliveira. I can see neither of you are zombies, or that fucking thing in the coat." He lowered his rifle. "I see that you are a cop, and you," and Carlos looked at Jill, "are a foxy lady."

"We're in the middle of a fucking outbreak, and you're hitting on me?" Jill shook her head. "Fucking shit, do men think of anything but tits and ass?" She'd been pointing her handgun at Carlos, which she carried on the same leg harness as her knife, and lowered it when she realized he was no longer a threat.

"Nah," Grayson and Carlos said, at the same time.

Jill rolled her eyes. There was another door in the cellar, also locked. She picked it open. "After you, _gentlemen_ ," she said, stowing the jackknife in its zippered pocket.

Once Jill went inside, Grayson hung back to talk to Carlos. He recognized his face from Rockfort, from one of the training drills Alfred occasionally oversaw. Apparently Carlos recognized him too, and said, "You're Alfred Ashford's bodyguard."

He almost corrected him and said _butler_ , but decided bodyguard sounded better. "Yeah. You're Oliveira, right? With Zinoviev's unit."

"Yeah, that's right," Carlos said. "You're a cop now?"

"Was. Doubt the RPD's gonna recover from this shitstorm."

"So back to bodyguarding, yeah?" Carlos laughed.

"USS, maybe."

Carlos stopped laughing.

"Zinoviev around?" Grayson asked.

"We're operating outta a cable-car right now," Carlos said. "Not too far from here, actually. But Mikhail's hurt pretty bad, and Nikolai's been tryin' to get the car runnin' again. Extraction's at St. Michael's, and that's where the car goes."

"What's your mission in Raccoon?"

Carlos shrugged. "Save civilians. Bosses don't tell us shit, you know that. You worked for Mr. Rockfort himself."

"Alfred told me lots of things," Grayson said, frowning. "We're tight, Alfred and I."

"I get your drift," Carlos muttered, his mouth a hard line. "You wanna pull 'rank' on Nikolai. Well, you're gonna have to wait until we get back to the cable car, buddy. That's where he is."

"So you said you were saving civilians," Grayson said, staring at Carlos, thinking that the kid looked a lot like Antonio Banderas. "You know anything about Annette Birkin?"

"The scientist? Nikolai said if we find her or William, get them out. But that's it."

"UBCS know where her last location was?"

"Probably NEST," Carlos said. "That's where all the lab nerds are."


	15. Slinking Away

"So how'd you wind up a cop anyway?" Carlos and him were walking a few paces behind Jill, down some other alleyway in another part of the city. Carlos's eyes, predictably, spent more time on Jill's ass than on their surroundings, and Grayson couldn't help but wonder how this clown ever graduated Rockfort.

"Got tired of Rockfort," Grayson said. When Carlos started staring at Jill's ass again, Grayson said, "Stop staring at her ass, man. Keep watching for zombies." He paused. "Or civilians. That's what you're here for, right?"

"Can't help it, man," Carlos said, grinning. Grayson knew Jill was very aware of Carlos's wandering eyes, but she was too focused on more important things—like keeping an eye out for that monster in the Kevlar trench-coat—than some grown man's adolescent libido. "Anyway," Carlos said, "I don't blame you. Rockfort sucks. In the middle of fucking nowhere. But you still ain't answered my question. How's a guy like you go from bodyguard to cop?"

"Not that weird of a transition."

Carlos gave him a flat look. "Uh-huh," he said. "Was always under the impression Ashford wasn't keen on letting you go. Then again, what do I know?" He shrugged.

"Not shit. But yeah," he said, "Alfred wasn't keen on letting me go. We still talk, though. He still tries to get me to come back."

Jill stopped and turned around, looking at Grayson. "You're not seriously going back?" He noticed a fresh smattering of blood on her blue tube-top. Not hers, though. "After all the shit Umbrella's done, you're actually thinking about going _back_?"

"Yeah, man, you can't leave Jill alone," Carlos said, frowning.

"Shut the fuck up, Oliveira," Jill said to Carlos. "You're not getting in my goddamn pants."

"You're wearing a skirt," Carlos pointed out. "Easier to get into than pants."

Jill stared him down, real cold, and said, "Yeah? You wanna come over here and try?"

Carlos backed down and awkwardly cleared his throat. Jill looked at Grayson again, waiting for an answer.

"I dunno," Grayson said. "Maybe. For a little while."

"Unfuckingbelievable," Jill said, and she started walking again, leading them to a street clogged with cars and several buses, the ones that had been carrying the last waves of evacuees; though it was pretty clear from the wrecks they'd never made it out. "Oliveira," she said suddenly, "how far are we from the cable car?"

"Couple blocks," Carlos said. "Look, I still got my objective, Jill. Rescuing civilians."

"There are no fucking civilians left to save," Jill said, emphatically throwing her arms out. "This city is fucking gone."

"I got my orders," Carlos said. "I'll get you to the cable car. Then I'm gonna resume my mission."

They encountered a few zombies, but not the thing in the trench-coat, which was fine by Grayson. He'd take one of the shufflers over a sprinting, bullet-proof monster any day. Jill dispatched most of the zombies with her knife in the same way she'd dispatched the dead jogger, and Carlos picked off the strays with clean head-shots. Grayson, on the rare occasions where Carlos and Jill missed a zombie, blew its head away with Clancy's shotgun, and it felt good.

They'd even started making a game out of it, inventing increasingly more creative ways to kill zombies. So far, Jill was winning; she'd dropkicked one and impaled it on a fire-hydrant. Grayson occasionally felt guilty about the game; the shufflers had been, just a few hours ago, people, and he really shouldn't have been enjoying a game where they were dropkicked onto fire-hydrants. But it was really hard to feel sympathy for monsters that ate people.

 _S.T.A.R.S_.

"Shit," Jill said, and ducked into an alleyway. Carlos and him joined her.

The man-thing was plodding closer. So close, Grayson could hear its leather creaking, its raspy breathing.

"Fuck this thing," Carlos said. He would have leaned out to shoot it, had Grayson not yanked him back and called him a fucking idiot. "That thing's gonna dog us," he whispered. "Gotta take it out."

Before a single syllable could leave either Jill's or Grayson's mouth, he heard the clink of a very huge gun being armed. He recognized the sound from weapons drills on Rockfort. Then the gigantic trench-coat monster filled the entrance to the alleyway, a fucking rocket launcher on its shoulder.

"Run!" Grayson screamed, scurrying in the opposite direction.

He heard a boom, something screaming through the air and exploding against a wall. The wall crumbled away, smoldering, revealing the guts of a clothing boutique where he could hear _Lovefool_ still blaring over its sound system. _Dear, I fear we're facing a problem…_

 _A big fucking problem_ , Grayson thought, running, vaulting over garbage bags and cutting sharp corners, explosions and crumbling walls behind him, and the thing on its relentless march, rasping S.T.A.R.S like they hadn't heard it say that the first hundred fucking times.

"We get it!" he yelled, and a rocket exploded above his head, almost brought a wall down on him.

"How many of those fucking rockets does it have?" Carlos shouted, twisting around and spraying the rocket-toting monster with automatic fire.

"Who fucking cares? Just keep running," Jill snapped.

They must have run six blocks before the thing finally abandoned its pursuit. Carlos led them the long way back to the cable car, taking various shortcuts the UBCS had mapped out. The cable car was an old piece of shit from the 60s, and no wonder it wasn't serviceable; the parts were hard to find, and too expensive to reproduce. Warren, he guessed, only kept the tram system around as some kind of weird tourist gimmick for people who wanted a "taste of the old days". The same kind of people who rented rowboats instead of motorboats, or ate at restaurants just because they were old, and not because the food was any good.

Mikhail Viktor was nursing a pretty bad wound on the upholstered bench inside the car, and good old Nikolai Zinoviev was Slav-crouched in front of an open panel, smoking Russian cigarettes and puzzling out the aged guts of the car like a backyard mechanic.

"Nikolai," Carlos said. "Found a couple of civvies."

Nikolai grunted, looked up. He was a middle-aged guy with crow's feet at the corners of his pale eyes, and a nasty scar that curved down from his left eye to the corner of his mouth, a souvenir from his Spetsnaz days when a mujahid got the drop on him; he'd told the story to Alfred, who loved those kind of wartime anecdotes. His gray hair was cut in a vague bowl-cut style that only, Grayson decided, a Russian could appreciate.

"Grayson Harman," Nikolai said, and stood, shaking Grayson's hand. He wore a green army jacket, a tactical harness over that, and tan pants tucked into a menacing pair of military boots with thick soles. "I know this one, Carlos. But, ah—" he gestured at Jill "—I don't know this one."

"Jill Valentine. S.T.A.R.S," she said, and paused. " _Was_ S.T.A.R.S."

"Ah," Nikolai said, and nodded. It seemed he was familiar with the story of its dissolution; but that didn't surprise Grayson. Nikolai always knew things.

"Nikolai," Grayson said, and looked at the door, "mind if we talk outside?"

Nikolai finished his pungent Russian cigarette, blew a cloud of acrid smoke made Grayson's eyes water, and nodded. He slung his rifle over his shoulder. "Sure," he said, and went outside.

They walked away from the cable car, out of earshot of Carlos, Jill, and Mikhail. "I need some information on Annette Birkin," he said to Nikolai, watching him light another cigarette and grumble about how he was almost out.

"What could you possibly want to know about Birkin?" Nikolai asked.

"Her location."

"Ah," Nikolai said, understanding. He always knew things. "Hah, Billy's been cuckolded."

"Don't throw around terms like cuckold. Sounds stupid. Like something teenagers say."

"Right, right," Nikolai said, sucking down acrid smoke. "Anyway, I don't know her location for sure as of now, but Annette _was_ in NEST." He looked at him. "There was an accident with William."

Grayson frowned. "Accident?"

"Far as I know, Annette's alive," Nikolai said. "But William? Eh. He is… not himself anymore. These scientists, they fuck around with DNA and expect nothing bad to come of it. And then something bad comes of it, and everyone doesn't have a fucking clue how to deal with it. They run around like chickens with their heads cut off."

"What's the quickest access point to NEST?" Grayson asked. If William had mutated, Grayson needed to reach Annette before something happened to her.

"The sewers," Nikolai said casually. "There was this construction company some time ago that was doing work in NEST. They had a maintenance car that took them down to the labs."

Grayson vaguely remembered some scientists mention the company, when he'd first gone down to NEST. Something about a guy who liked chess, and how the mechanics were always in and out, in and out. "What about the Umbrella building?"

Nikolai laughed. "Unless you wish to swim through an ocean of zombies, I suggest you don't go that way, Harman."

"So sewers it is," Grayson said, and shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do was wade through shit and piss, but if it was the quickest route to Annette, he'd wade through shit and piss.

"There's a bit of roadwork going on near Kendo's Gun Shop," Nikolai said, venting smoke from his nostrils and mouth. "They were digging there. Fixing something with the pipelines. Whole chunk of road is out."

"Thanks, Nikolai."

"Of course. I'm a hopeless romantic." Nikolai gave a shit-eating grin. "And I owe Mr. Ashford a favor or two. Besides, I like you, Harman. Though I must say, I never thought you would be here, working as a cop. Alfred liked to keep you close. He even asked me to extract you, once he heard the news about Raccoon."

Grayson raised an eyebrow. "Are you gonna extract me?"

"If you come back in one piece, certainly. I, however, have secondary orders. Straight from Mr. Spencer. You aren't a priority, and Mr. Spencer's orders takes priority over Mr. Ashford's." He was still grinning around his cigarette. "Hierarchy, Harman. The cornerstone of civilization."

"Appreciate it, Nikolai."

"Think nothing of it." He glanced at the cable car. "You better go before Ms. Valentine stops you."

Nikolai always knew things.


	16. Good News, Bad News

This part of Raccoon City was still relatively intact. Most of it was residential, so it had been fairly secluded from the evacuation routes when shit went down, as no major roads went through here. If not for the zombies, everything looked almost normal. A quiet night on a quiet neighborhood street.

He passed dark storefronts, barricaded residences. Someone had knocked over a newspaper dispenser, and soggy papers were scattered across the sidewalk, the road, on the hoods of cars. A plastic bag with a bright yellow smiley face cartwheeled past him on a gust of wind, tossing cold September rain into his face. He wished he'd brought his RPD jacket; the temperature had dipped, and the rain left him shivering and wet.

" _How do you stand the fucking cold down here?" he'd asked Alexia, bundled in his fleeced denim jacket,_ _huddled by the heater vent for warmth_ _._

_Alexia sat on her upholstered stool, peering into a high-powered microscope, unfazed by the chill that, despite a multi-million dollar heating system, pervaded every inch of the Antarctica Laboratory. "Simple," she said, without looking up, fiddling with the complicated knobs on her microscope. "I'm English."_

_"_ _Is that your explanation for everything, Lex?"_

_"Yes._ _England's bloody cold. You've been there, Grayson."_

_"_ _You know what's also an English thing?"_

_She finally looked up from her microscope, pale blue eyes on him. Her cheeks and nose were slightly pink from the cold. "What is?"_

_"_ _Snark."_

_"_ _British comedy wouldn't exist_ _without it_ _." She grinned, then resumed doing whatever she was doing on her microscope._

_"_ _Sure wouldn't. Without it, you guys wouldn't have a sense of humor."_

_"_ _Not a shred," she agreed._

"And it was still warmer in that fucking facility than it is right now," Grayson muttered, his breath steaming in the air. Shivering, he turned a corner and tramped over a mulch of trash which had spilled from an overturned garbage can.

A zombie lunged at him from an alleyway. He shoved it away and blew its head off with the shotgun, spattering the glass-fronted exterior of MIKE'S HOBBY HOUSE with bits of bone and brain. He took inventory of his ammunition; only eight shells left, so going forward, he'd need to be more frugal with his shooting.

At least the trench-coat monster wasn't after him anymore, so that was good; it had only been interested in S.T.A.R.S members. Grayson frowned, looked back in the direction of the cable car. He hoped Jill would be okay; the woman was tough as nails, but that thing was bulletproof and inhumanly fast. And it had a fucking rocket launcher.

 _No_ , he told himself. _Now is not the time_ _to find your sense of guilt_ _, Grayson_. _You need to find Annette_.

His radio suddenly crackled; he'd almost forgotten he'd had it, it had been silent for so long. "Lieutenant?"

"It's me, rookie," came Marvin's voice, but he sounded a lot weaker than before, like it hurt just to talk. "Told you I'd radio you when Sherry showed up. She's here."

Grayson stopped walking. Another bag with a smiley face wheeled by him, and he wondered idly if it was the same one from before. "Sherry's there?"

"Yeah. Don't worry, I got her somewhere safe. Precinct was overrun. Those assholes who killed Taylor? Motherfuckers all turned."

"Was Sherry hurt?"

"Nah," Marvin said, "she was shook up, sure, but not hurt. At least visibly. Who knows what kinda toll this shit's takin' on the poor kid's head. Girl's gonna make some asshole shrink rich."

"Are you sure she's safe, Marvin?"

"I wouldn't lie to you, boot," Marvin said, a shade of irritation in his voice. "She's safe, you got my word. Edwards went with her."

"Any luck on that Scooby Doo shit?"

"Not yet. Edwards is still workin' that out. I'd help, but—goddamn, this wound's killin' me, Harman. Hurts like a motherfucker. Think it's infected; it's startin' to smell like almonds. They say when it smells like almonds, it's infected, right? I remember readin' that somewhere..."

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant."

"It's fine, Harman. Ain't your fault. Don't get bitten by those things, man. I… fuck, man, I can feel whatever shit's wrong with 'em, it's infectin' me, too. Can feel myself slippin' away, boot. And you know what's so funny about this shit? I ain't even mad I'm dyin'. I'm mad I won't make it to my daughter's recital, take her out for ice cream…."

Grayson tried not to focus on the fact Marvin was dying. Or that Sherry was somewhere in a precinct overrun by zombies. "I had a feeling it was spread through bites," he said. "When I buried Clancy? Noticed a bite on his ankle. Something took a huge chunk outta it."

"Poor fucker. I told Edwards when I turn, take me out. Uniform or not, he can't hesitate. I hesitated, and look where that shit got me."

"It was a pleasure serving with you, Lieutenant," Grayson said, and meant it. "You're a good cop, a great dad. A real role-model. Wish I could be half the man you are, Branagh."

"None of that shit, Harman. You're not any less of a man than the next. You're just plain fuckin' dumb when it comes to women. Let your dick do too much thinkin'."

"I know," he said. "I destroyed a marriage and cheated on Jill with the woman whose marriage I destroyed. Plain fucking dumb's an understatement."

"Wouldn't say you destroyed anythin'," Marvin said. "You sound like you really love this woman, Harman. Just gotta stop playin' these little boy games with Jill, grow a pair and come clean. But now's not the goddamn time to talk 'bout your complicated love-life; I ain't Jerry Springer. You take care out there, Harman. You get out alive with the woman you love, and her little girl, hear? For me."

"I will, Lieutenant. Keep Sherry safe for as long as you can. When I find Annette, I'll come for her."

"Good man." Then Marvin was gone.

* * *

An hour later, Grayson found himself surrounded by zombies. He'd taken a wrong turn, walked right into a hoard. His back pressed against the wet brickwork, he stared at the dead faces closing in on him. He'd exhausted his ammunition when he'd tried, and failed, to blast his way out, so he'd resorted to bludgeoning them with the gun's stock.

Bludgeoning only worked for so long; he'd tired himself out, and the zombies seemed to sense that, came crashing down on him like a breaker. He struggled uselessly on the pavement; then something grabbed his leg and bit him. Warm blood soaked his pant-leg, and then they started tearing at his RPD shirt, ripping off a sleeve, his first two buttons.

 _I'm going to die_ , he thought, a little too soberly. _They're gonna rip me apart_.

Gunshots. A teenaged zombie toppled across his legs, a bloody hole between its eyes. More gunshots. More zombies died.

Then someone dragged him through the door of a walk-up that smelled of boiled cabbage and curry, and locked the door.

A woman in a red dress and shoulder holster. Chinese, maybe. Her sleek black hair was cut in a bob. She looked at him, said, "Shit, you've been bitten," and took out her gun, pointing it at him.

"Don't shoot," he said, and shook his head. "Please." His pant-leg was soaked with blood.

"I have to terminate you," the woman said. "You're infected."

"Please," he pleaded, "don't shoot."

Her gun stayed on him. Silence. She stared him down the whole time, unblinking.

"Don't. I'm trying to find my girlfriend, Annette."

Now the woman lowered her gun; but it didn't go back in its holster. "What's her last name?" she asked.

"Birkin. Annette Birkin."

"Okay," and she looked at the name on his uniform, "Harman, you've bought some time for yourself. Tell me everything you know about Annette Birkin."

"Who are you?"

"Ada. I'm with the FBI. We've been investigating Annette Birkin for some time."

In a one-bedroom apartment that definitely wasn't her permanent residence, or even her residence at all, Ada, who gave her surname as Wong, treated his wound and waited for him to talk about Annette.

"So we're clear," Ada Wong said, and dragged over a chair from the table in the tiny kitchen, spinning it around and straddling it, arms on the backrest, the gun still on him, "I'm still gonna shoot you the moment you turn. There's no curing you, Harman. But if you don't talk about Annette, you're not gonna get to enjoy these last few hours on Earth."

Neon, from a billboard atop the apartment building opposite this one, spilled through the window, painting the room in reds, pinks, and oranges. Ada Wong watched him from behind her gun.

Something in her eyes bothered him; they were the sort of eyes that belonged to professional killers, not FBI agents. Then again, some would argue there was no difference between the two.

"Can I see your ID?"

Ada got up, never taking the gun off him, and went to the kitchen table, fishing something out from the Burberry coat thrown across the table. She showed it to him; it was an ID that identified her as Special Agent Ada Wong. It seemed legit; all the right watermarks were there.

"Look," Grayson said, from his place on the scratchy corduroy couch that smelled of cat, wincing, white-hot pain shooting up his leg, "if this is about her work with Umbrella, she never told me anything. Just that William Birkin, her husband, was under investigation. I'm guessing you guys were the ones putting the screws to Umbrella to investigate him."

Ada stared at the visitor band on his wrist. "What's that?"

"A visitor band to their lab. I never had access to anything beyond the lobby and cafeteria."

"Give it to me."

"I need it," he said. "Annette's down there. She could still be alive."

"But you won't be in a few hours. Give it."

Grayson hesitated. Then unhooked the bracelet and handed it to Ada. "Promise," he said, watching her clip it around her wrist, "you'll save Annette. She had nothing to do with whatever William Birkin was up to, I swear. I know Annette."

"Maybe not as well as you think you do," Ada said, though she didn't elaborate on the comment. "There's some beer in the fridge," she added, putting away her gun. "Want to enjoy a few drinks before you die?"

"Yes."

Ada came back into the living room with an open beer; it was icy cold. She had one for herself, too, which she opened with a bottle-opener and nearly downed in a single go. "You're a cop," she remarked.

Grayson sipped his beer. "Yeah. Was."

"Know anything about a Ben Bertolucci? He's an informant."

"The reporter?" he said. "We jailed him for trespassing on the Birkin's property. Far as I know, he's still in his cell." Grayson paused, considering his own circumstances. "Lucky him."

"So he's probably still alive. Good. We had him looking into the Birkins for us."

"If you're going back to the precinct, there's a little girl there. Sherry."

A flash of humanity in Ada's cold eyes. "I'll get her out."

"And Annette?"

"I'll see how compliant she is first."


	17. In the Company of Ada Wong

The pain had spread from his leg to the rest of him, and Grayson wondered if this was what sepsis felt like. Sweating, his heart hammering against his rib-cage, he struggled to breathe. Sucked at the air like an asthmatic fish.

The neon coming through the window became a kaleidoscope of fever colors, and Ada's eyes winked like the lights atop the Raccoon City radio tower, like the twinned cherry of Annette's cigarette…

He must have asked for water, because Ada handed him a cup. The cup had a Disney princess on it, but Grayson didn't know which one. Sherry knew all the princesses, but she wasn't here for him to ask…Grayson slopped the water down the front of his uniform like a kid learning how to drink from their first cup. Ada fed the rest to him. The water was lukewarm and tasted like copper.

"You're not looking so hot," she told him.

"I'm dying."

"You are," Ada agreed.

He must have fallen asleep. When he woke, Ada was sitting across from him in the dining room chair, finger on the trigger. "You should be dead," she remarked. Glancing at the clock on the wall, Ada added, "You're an hour overdue."

"Maybe it affects people differently." He coughed. His mouth was dry.

"Maybe," she said, gun still trained on him. Grayson wondered how long she'd been holding the gun like that, and whether or not her arm was tired.

Slept again. Came around. Felt strangely lucid. "I'm almost afraid to look at my leg," he remarked.

Ada said nothing. Just watched him from behind her gun, her eyes winking red in the neon.

The next time Grayson came around, Ada said to him, "You're still not dead." She rose from her chair and walked over. Studied him like Alexia had studied her lab rats whenever they'd shown promising results. "Either that," she added, "or you're just taking forever to die."

He shivered involuntarily, feeling nauseous and cold. "I feel like I'm dying," Grayson said, and curled up on the couch, the reek of cat overpowering his sense of smell. His leg throbbed and burned, and his head hurt, felt brittle almost, like his skull would fall apart if he moved too suddenly. His breathing came short and unsteady. He tried to yawn; but his lungs just couldn't take in that much air.

Fell asleep. Woke up to a rainy morning, to inert neon. Ada had nodded off in her chair, head tucked into her arms, which were folded atop the backrest, the gun dangling in her hand—her finger, thankfully, off the trigger. Then she snapped awake as though she'd suddenly realized she'd overslept for work. And aimed the gun at him, fingering the trigger. Paused. Lowered the gun. "Holy shit," she said, staring at him, dark circles under her eyes. "You didn't turn."

His leg didn't really hurt anymore. Sore, but not painful. Grayson stood, testing it; he could walk, though with a slight limp. "Guess not," he said, just as surprised as Ada.

"Even got some of your color back," she remarked, and put the gun away. Ada appraised him in silence, like a collector estimating the worth of some piece. "Guess I don't have to kill you after all." Ada stood, winced; she'd been straddling the chair all night, and her legs probably hurt. "Goddamn, don't ever fall asleep like that," she told him, and limped toward the tiny hallway to the left of the kitchen.

"Where the hell are you going?" he asked.

"Bed," she said to him. "You got your sleep. I didn't." He heard a door slam.

Grayson decided to get in touch with Marvin. "Lieutenant? You alive?"

Marvin didn't pick up.

"Probably out of range." Something told him Marvin was still alive. The guy was a survivor; he'd been shot, Marvin had told him, four years ago, and the doctors had said he'd probably never walk again. Turned out to be a pretty bullshit prognosis; Marvin was one of the fastest guys in the department.

But even he couldn't outrun the infection; all Marvin could do was hold on to his humanity for as long as possible, maybe help a few people before his light went out.

He didn't see Ada again until later that evening; though Grayson had heard her talking to someone in the room. Probably her superiors at the FBI. "So I'm curious," Ada said to him, grabbing her coat from the kitchen table. "How'd you wind up with Annette Birkin?"

He'd been in the middle of redressing his wound; it didn't hurt much anymore, but it still looked bad. "This the FBI asking, or you?" he asked, carefully taping the gauze to his leg, then wrapping a bandage around it.

"Mostly me," Ada replied, her eyes vanishing behind a pair of sunglasses.

"It's dark. Why the shades?"

"Don't avoid the question, Harman."

Grayson shrugged. "She was unhappy in her marriage, and I'd known her for a long time—"

"How long?"

"Long enough."

"Just answer the question, Harman."

"Since 1983. She's older than me by a few years."

Ada checked the magazine on her gun, snicked it back into place. Then holstered her gun and buttoned her coat. "You sure you don't know anything about her research?" She looked at him from behind her tinted sunglasses. "She didn't let anything slip during pillow-talk?"

"She didn't talk about work when we were together," Grayson said, frowning. "She's my girlfriend. We talked about other things. Mostly about her husband, her daughter, when she was free to come over and have sex." He glared. "You want the details on that? Annette's pretty vanilla, so I doubt you'd find it that interesting."

"That won't be necessary. What about you, though? Something interesting there. You're immune to the T-Virus."

"The what?"

Ada raised her eyebrows. "I guess she really didn't tell you much. It's what started this shit in Raccoon City. The T-Virus was an experimental virus developed by Umbrella, for the purpose of military application. They're making bioweapons, Harman. And selling them to the highest bidder." She shook her head, then said, "But I'm not interested in the T-Virus. I'm interested in something else. G."

"I don't know anything about it," he said. "Whatever this 'G' is."

"I believe you."


	18. Down

The fact that Umbrella was developing bioweapons hadn't surprised him. After he'd seen Rockfort, nothing about the company surprised him anymore. _And_ _why should it_ , he thought. Corporations did shady things all the time; half the terrorists in the world were backed by American dollars, which trickled down the country's intricate ladder of fronts and blinds.

Grayson thought about mentioning Rockfort, but decided against it. He didn't want to throw Alfred under the bus. And if Umbrella got wind he'd ratted them out to the FBI, he'd probably have their favorite taxman, HUNK, knocking on his door to collect. Just like they'd sent some guys to collect on James Marcus when he'd gotten a little too ornery for Spencer's liking.

And when they got out of Raccoon City, Grayson planned to join the USS. Annette and him were going to get married, and he'd adopt Sherry. He'd already started looking into the paperwork. He couldn't afford trouble.

 _Assuming,_ he thought, _Annette doesn't testify against the_ _company_ _, and then we'll be in real trouble._ But something told him Annette didn't want Taxman HUNK on her ass either. She'd probably accept a pay raise and promotion, and a transfer to another laboratory. And he'd talk Alfred into transferring him to whatever lab Annette was working in. It was going to work out.

Grayson limped behind Ada, down a street that looked as if a tornado had come through. Newspapers, bags, and various other pieces of garbage littered every inch of the street. One of the streetlamps were bent, the light-bulb flickering, a lose cable sparking in a puddle, which they steered clear of.

"Where're we heading?" he asked, cold, wet wind blowing in his face. They passed TED'S DISCOUNT ELECTRONICS, the windows and door shuttered, the corrugated metal scrawled over in graffiti.

"Raccoon City Police Department," Ada said, calm and collected as ever, like outbreaks were routine for her.

"I need to get to Kendo's Gun Shop."

"It's probably been looted," she said.

"No, I need to get underground. To the sewer. There's a way to get down there, near Kendo's."

"What a coincidence. I need to go underground too," Ada said. "But there's no reaching Kendo's without going through the Raccoon City Police Department. Only two other streets lead there. One street's blocked by debris and fire; the other's been ripped up. Roadwork."

"I was at the precinct. You can't get around it without going through the parking garage." He suddenly remembered his keycard, the one that allowed him to access the garage; every cop had one. Grayson dug through his pockets, but didn't find it. "Fuck," he said. "Must've left it in my car."

Ada stopped walking and looked at him.

"My garage pass," he said.

Ada got real close to his face, so close he could smell the peppermint gum on her breath. "I brought you with me to get through that fucking garage," she said evenly. "And you're telling me you can't?"

"I had it in my personal car, I think. In the glove compartment."

"We don't have fucking time to gamble on a 'maybe'," Ada snapped, and stepped back. "I should leave your sorry ass here. But my superiors said to bring you along."

"It's about the immunity, isn't it?"

"Bingo," she said, and turned around, walking away. Rain beaded on her Burberry coat. Her high heels clicked sharply against the asphalt. "You could save a lot of lives, Harman." She stopped suddenly and pushed him into a gap between an all-night laundromat, and a thrift-shop called BENNY'S DEAL HUT. It smelled like stale piss and wet trash in the gap. Water, from a rusty pipe, dripped onto his head.

It was tight in the gap; they were mashed together, Siamese twins conjoined at the stomach. He opened his mouth to talk and Ada clapped her hand over it.

Something big headed their way, heavy footsteps sledgehammering the asphalt. Grayson thought it was the S.T.A.R.S monster; he tried to peek, but Ada quickly shoved him back into the gap and gave this look that said: _don't_. So he didn't, waiting in the piss-smelling darkness of the gap between buildings, staring at the brickwork behind Ada's head. A thick, viscous layer of shit-smelling sludge stained the brickwork, and when he got a whiff of it, Grayson gagged.

A giant bald man, well over eight feet, appeared outside the gap, idling in the middle of the street. His skin was the sort of gray that belonged to corpses, his hard features marred by crisscrossing scars—like someone had gone to town on his face with a kitchen knife. He wore a trench-coat cut from the same kind of Kevlar material as the S.T.A.R.S monster, and Grayson began to wonder if it was some kind of weird trend down in the labs, to dress monsters like school shooters.

The giant bald man scanned the area, his glaucous eyes reminding Grayson of some deep-sea fish. He seemed to be looking for something. Kept turning his head like a periscope.

Then the man in the trench-coat stomped off. It wasn't until they couldn't hear his footsteps anymore that Ada spoke. "Tyrant," she told him. "One of those bioweapons I'd mentioned. Codename Mr. X. It's primary directive is to eliminate witnesses."

"So it kills any survivor it comes across," he said.

Ada nodded.

"What the fuck is with the trench-coats? Is it supposed to be camouflage? Because if so, it's fucking terrible camouflage." He inhaled, exhaled. Composed himself. Then, "Is it related to that monster? The thing going after S.T.A.R.S members?"

"That's Nemesis," Ada told him. "We don't have to worry about Nemesis. It's purpose is to eliminate S.T.A.R.S members, and neither of us are S.T.A.R.S. As long as we don't attack it, we're fine."

"But Mr. X'll kill us."

"Without hesitation," Ada said.

"If the FBI knows so fucking much about these bioweapons—like their names and whatever the fuck they're programmed to do—why wasn't something done about them before?"

"No actual proof," Ada said, and squeezed out of the gap, looking left, then right. She gestured for him to follow. "We're clear. Come on. Before it comes back."

Three blocks later, they arrived at the Raccoon City Police Department. They scaled a wall and went through one of the side-gates—zombies swarmed the front of the building—that led into the yard where Marvin and him had buried the dead. Clancy's hat still hung on his grave, the badge mounted on it shining in the floodlights, but his necklace with the cross was gone.

They entered the main lobby. It felt sepulchral now. Cold. He heard a zombie shuffling around somewhere; the acoustics in the lobby were good. Two ramps flanked the front-desk, leading up to a raised area, where the goddess statue stood hoisting the American flag. Directly across from the statue stood the couch and makeshift table Marvin had been sitting at; but Marvin wasn't on the couch anymore. Marvin lay on the floor instead, his head blown open, a set of bloody footprints leading away from him toward the goddess statue.

Grayson took a moment to pay his respects to the Lieutenant. Then he reached into Marvin's pocket, where he kept his wallet, and opened it; a young black girl in tights smiled at him from a photograph, her hair done in elaborate braids, Marvin, in a nice suit, standing proudly beside her. He took the photo out of its slip-cover, put the wallet back, and said, "I'll make sure this gets to Keira, Lieutenant."

Someone, probably Edwards, had figured out the statue puzzle. A set of steps went down to an open door, some kind of office beyond it. A faint smell of wood-cleaner and old books wafted up from the room.

Ada produced a small flashlight from the pocket of her coat and shined it downstairs. "Looks clear," she remarked. "Think this could be a way of getting around the garage problem?"

"I don't know anything about what's down there," he said. "Nobody does. Used to be some kinda storage room, when the station was a museum. But sure, I don't see why not."

"See those footprints?" Ada said, shining the flashlight over the bloody footprints leading away from Marvin. "Someone's down there. We better be careful."

The footprints were definitely a man's. Edwards. And Edwards would've taken Sherry with him. "We're going down," he said, and went ahead of Ada. "Annette's little girl is down there. Those footprints belong to Elliot Edwards, another cop. Gotta be. He would've taken Sherry with him."

"You sound sure," Ada remarked, behind him.

"Who else would it be?"

If the secret room had ever been an office, Grayson didn't know what purpose it had served. It looked like some bibliophile's den, a room where they could indulge in their hobby without interruption. The walls were bookshelves, and the room smelled like an old library, or the books section of a thrift-shop.

Some kind of cage elevator in a little alcove to their right. They stepped into it; Ada tapped DOWN.


	19. Leon Kennedy

Elevators of any kind made him nervous, but an elevator like this—what amounted to a bird-cage on strings—made him positively anxious. It seesawed down the shaft like a Ferris wheel gondola, dredging up boyhood memories of the boardwalk, and how Alfred, always delighting in other people's discomfort, had rocked The Giant Wheel's gondola to scare him.

Then the elevator lurched to an abrupt stop, nearly tipping him over. The door clattered open with a noise like someone shaking a grocery cart, and they stepped—he limped—into the darkness of a stairwell that smelled of wet concrete and latex paint.

"Looks like maintenance access," Ada said, her flashlight shining over several wet floor signs, ladders, rubber cones, metal barrels, crates and pallets under grimy tarpaulin. "You said they stored artifacts down here?" She looked at him, inscrutable under the tinted sunglasses. "When the precinct was a museum?"

"Just assumed." He tried to keep most of his weight off his bad leg; the pain was more manageable that way. "Could've been wrong."

They started down, Grayson hopping along behind her like the steps were covered in caltrops. A door at the bottom of the stairwell opened into a machinery room. Steam, from several broken pipes, blanketed the room like warm fog, and the humidity made him choke and sweat.

A few of the machines were badly dented and spattered with blood. Someone had fought down here, which Ada was quick to point out. "Couldn't have been too long ago," she said, studying a wet bloom of blood on the pressure gauge of a machine. "Blood's still pretty fresh."

An expansion-grate catwalk ringed the room, though a section of it had collapsed. "No way I can jump that gap," Grayson said, staring at the door to the prefab office across the way, leaning heavily on the rust-flecked handrail. His leg, now that the adrenaline had started to recede, hurt excruciatingly; felt like it was encased in a rusty, child-sized iron maiden.

"There's another door over here," Ada said, indicating a door blocked off by a locker someone had tipped over, and several metal canisters. "Give me a hand? Stuff's heavy, and your arms aren't busted."

Grayson limped over, trying his best to ignore the searing pain in his leg. He helped Ada clear away the canisters, then pushed the locker upright. An office. A computer chugged on an aluminum desk, someone's unfinished game of Solitaire flickering on the cracked monitor.

They were able to get across the machinery room that way. Eventually, they found themselves emerging from an open manhole, in the dank, gasoline-smelling murk of the parking garage. Someone, a man, shouted for help. Ada went ahead, and Grayson heard gunshots, a dog yelp, and some words exchanged between Ada and whoever she'd just saved.

The guy she'd saved wore an RPD tactical uniform, but had the look of a doe-eyed rookie fresh from the academy. He was a handsome kid with honey-brown boyband hair and a dimpled boyband smile. An infected doberman laid by his feet, on its side, its long grayish-pink tongue unfurled on the concrete, blood pooling underneath its blown-open skull.

"You're a cop," Grayson said, and hobbled over.

The kid looked at him, and his eyes lit up when he saw Grayson's uniform. Like seeing another cop—and a living one—was the best thing that had happened to him since he'd rolled into Raccoon City.

"My name's Leon Kennedy," Leon Kennedy said, and shook Grayson's hand a little too firmly, a little too eagerly. "Today was supposed to be my first day with the department. Shit luck, huh?"

"Not as shit as mine," Grayson remarked, wincing.

Leon looked at the bloody bandage on his leg. "You're hurt." He looked at him. His eyes were blue. "Are you…?"

"He's not gonna turn," Ada said. "He just hurt himself trying to climb over some concrete."

Grayson frowned, debating whether or not he should correct her. And decided not to, for reasons he didn't even understand. "Yeah. Hey, Kennedy. I think I remember Lieutenant Branagh mentioning you."

Leon frowned, and Grayson imagined a shadow passing over his face. "I didn't wanna shoot him," he said, and shook his head. "He was a good guy. Helped me get out of the precinct." He looked over his shoulder at the shuttered gate standing between them, and the street—and consequently Kendo's Gun Shop, and the sewers in which Grayson could find Annette—beyond it. "Not that it did much good. Need a keycard, but I never got mine. Never officially started the job."

"Hey, Kennedy," Grayson said. "Did you see a little girl? Blonde, blue eyes. Wearing a blue plaid school uniform?"

Leon shook his head. "Sorry, no. Daughter?"

"My girlfriend's," Grayson said.

"I'll keep an eye out," Leon said, and Grayson knew the kid meant that. He gave off some serious boy-scout energy, the sort of idealist Marvin had wanted every cop to be.

"How about a cop?" Grayson asked. "Elliot Edwards. Sort of an asshole. Dirty blonde hair. You'd know him."

The look on Leon's face told Grayson that he did, in fact, know who Elliot Edwards was—and that he'd died, and had died violently. "He's dead," he said. "I'm sorry."

Grayson sighed. Then grimaced and leaned against a pillar, his leg screaming. "I need a few minutes," he said, sweating.

"He might be going septic," Leon said to Ada. "We gotta do something—"

"Not much we can do," Ada said smoothly. She glanced in the direction of the door that led to the jail cells. "He'll be fine, I'm sure. Just gonna feel pretty shitty. Anyway, I've got someone to talk to, so I'll see you later, Leon."

"We can't just leave him here," Leon argued. But Ada ignored him, punctuating how much she didn't care with a loud slam of the door.

He would have liked to think Ada needed him, and that she'd come back; but somehow Grayson doubted that. He was slowing her down, and Ada could easily lie to her superiors, say some zombies had eaten him, or that he'd been killed by Mr. X, and that there was nothing she could have done to prevent his untimely demise. And nobody would question it, because it was a perfectly valid explanation, and it meant less paperwork for them, and for her, to fill out.

Leon helped him into the back of an open SWAT van which smelled of sweat and boot-leather. "I'm not gonna just leave an injured man," he said, like a boy-scout who was excited to finally act on some scenario he'd read about in his manual. "I gotta few first aid items on me, but it's not much. But better than nothing, right?"

"I'll be fine," Grayson said, hoisting himself onto the foam-padded bench behind him. "I just need a few minutes."

"We'll get that gate up," Leon said. "I promise. And if that FBI agent won't take you, I will."

"Look, I get it," Grayson said, and looked at him. "In your head, this is your way of making up for Marvin and Elliot. Jesus, you really are a goddamn rookie." He shook his head, his leg burning and throbbing. "But don't worry about me. I can take care of myself."

"Now's not the time to be a hard-ass," Leon countered, giving him a hard look. "Let me treat your wound, Harman."

Grayson almost asked how Leon knew his name; but remembered he was still wearing his G. HARMAN nameplate. "It's already treated, boot. I'm okay. Should go after that FBI woman; she'll get you outta Raccoon."

"Look—"

"Kennedy, I'm fine. Go."

"Your girlfriend's name," Leon said suddenly. "What is it?"

"Annette Birkin," he said.

"I'll find Annette, and I'll find her daughter. I promise. Your radio still work?"

"Yeah, it works."

"Keep an ear open," Leon said. "I see them, I'll let you know."


	20. To the Sewers!

Ada startled him when she'd suddenly jumped into the driver's seat of the SWAT van and threw it into reverse; the vehicle jounced on its chassis, flinging Grayson from the bench to the grooved metal floor. He'd struck his nose against the floor; blood dripped onto his upper-lip. The pain in his leg was unbearable.

"Get ready," Ada said, and she threw the van into drive, and it pealed forward with an awkward lurch, smashing into something huge. The van squealed loudly, fishtailing, the smell of burnt rubber stinging his nostrils. Then the van stopped, and she said, "Get out," and got out.

Grayson banged open the rear doors to the van and spilled onto the concrete, into a shiny rainbow pool of oil. Leon grabbed him and helped him to his feet. Ada told Leon this was getting old, that she'd saved his ass twice, and he shot back with some smartassery about scores.

"I take it you got the keycard?" Ada asked Leon.

"Yeah, and this..." And Leon tossed something—a recorder—to her. "Was hoping you could explain what's on it."

Ada looked at the recorder, turned it over in her hands. "Maybe," she said, and looked at Leon. "After I hear it. Let's get out of here." She walked away, her high heels rapping out a drowsy staccato on the asphalt.

"What the fuck happened?" Grayson asked, limping and grimacing alongside Leon, who, just like a real boy-scout walked the elderly across roads, walked him across the garage. Leon was a lot shorter than him; Grayson had to sort of lean down and to the side so Leon could support him.

"Remember Mr. X?" Ada said.

"Oh," Grayson said.

"Popped Ben's head like a grape tomato," Leon said, shuddering. With his free hand, he fed the keycard into the kiosk by the shuttered gate. The gate started to rattle up on its tracks. "But good news, I guess? He had his parking permit."

"X shouldn't be a problem right now." Something groaned and shifted within the frame of the SWAT van; then it exploded, raining fiery shrapnel on the asphalt. Thankfully, they were far enough from the explosion that nothing hit them. Ada said, "Shouldn't be a problem at all."

They walked into the rain, their breath steaming in the air. Sodium vapors illuminated the rain in such a way that it looked less like rain, and more like clouds of some noxious gas. Cars, and several ambulances, cluttered the street. An empty gurney squeaked across the road, driven by a gust of wind.

Up the street, the red neon of KENDO'S GUN SHOP glowed like a beacon. The section of road beyond Kendo's had been dug up; Grayson saw scaffolding, pipes, concrete tubes, and metal mesh down in the pit.

"Mayor Warren wanted to expand the Raccoon City subway system," Leon said, helpfully. "I read a lot about Raccoon City while I was prepping to move here. You know, for the job." He paused. "You holding up okay, Harman?"

"I'll be fine."

"Harman," Leon said, once Ada was out of earshot. "On the recorder, the one I gave Ada? Ben was interviewing an Annette." He frowned.

Grayson vaguely remembered Annette mentioning an interview with a reporter—something about an Umbrella scholarship; but he hadn't expected that interviewer to be Ben Bertolucci, who he'd busted just a week ago for trespassing on the Birkin's property. "There are other women named Annette, Kennedy," he reasoned.

"So it's purely by coincidence Ben interviews an Annette who _happens_ to work for Umbrella, and who _happens_ to have knowledge about an underground lab?" He stared at Grayson. "About something called the G-Virus?" Grayson didn't say anything, and that clearly frustrated Leon; he wore it on his face, just like a rookie. "I'm young, sure, but I'm not fucking stupid, Harman."

"Never said you were, boot. How'd you know Annette worked for Umbrella? I didn't mention that."

"Ada told me," Leon said.

"Shut up. Both of you," Ada said coldly. "I can't hear myself think." She was kneeling in front of the doors to the gun-shop, picking the lock with a jackknife lock pick like Jill's. "Bingo," she muttered. The doors creaked open. She pocketed the jackknife and stepped aside, theatrically sweeping a hand toward the door. "After you, boys."

They went inside. The shelves were tipped over, the showcases shattered and empty. The parquet floor was layered with a stratum of ruined cardboard boxes, Styrofoam packing, bottles, oblong shards of glass, crumpled shooting targets. Grayson found half a box of 12-gauge shells on the floor, and loaded ten of them into his empty shotgun; then pocketed the rest.

A door stood at the back of the store. A middle-aged guy suddenly shouldered through the door, shotgun pointed at Leon's—and Grayson's—head. He was a grizzled guy in a yellow plaid shirt and h-harness, his hard face lost under a bristling, dark beard. "Don't move," the guy said.

"We're not gonna hurt you," Leon said, adopting a negotiator's tone. "We're just passing through. Road's out. Only way around it is through this shop."

"I said don't move," the guy said. His hair was disheveled, and he had the sort of dog-tired look of someone who hadn't slept since Raccoon City had gone to hell. "Now," the man continued, "you're gonna go right back the way you came."

"We just need to get around the fucking construction work," Grayson snapped. Between the pain in his leg, the fact Annette and Sherry could be in danger, and this asshole's stubbornness, he wasn't in any mood to deal with this shit. "Put your fucking gun down, or I fucking swear—"

"You swear what?" The guy said, and swung the shotgun on Grayson. Grayson stared right into the barrel. "'Cause far as I can tell, you're in position to do shit-all, buddy. Now get the fuck outta my shop."

Grayson heard something rasp behind the man. A little girl in pajamas idled in the mercury vapor of a light mounted above a door—maybe some kind of private residence. She called out for her daddy.

"Think your daughter needs help, sir," Leon said, diplomatically. Regurgitating deescalation exercises he'd learned in the academy, Grayson decided. "I'm gonna ask you to lower that gun. Please."

"Like hell you are," the man said. "And you don't tell me how to deal with my daughter, asshole."

Ada pulled her gun and pointed it at the shotgun-toting man. "Drop it," she said smoothly.

The guy swung the barrel on Ada, but kept glancing at Leon and him.

Ada pointed her gun at the daughter.

"No, wait!" the man cried, and lowered his gun, stepping between Ada and the little girl.

"Step aside," Ada said. "We need to terminate her before she turns."

"'Terminate'?" the man said through his teeth, sweat beading on his stubbly upper-lip, and his grimy forehead. "That's my fucking daughter."

"Ada," Leon said, looking at her. "Just let them be."

Ada lowered her gun.

"Emma," the man said to the little girl, his shotgun still on Ada. "I told you to stay put."

"She's gonna turn into one of those fucking zombies," Grayson snapped. "She's gonna rip your goddamn neck open with her teeth, and you're still pointing your gun at us?" He looked at Emma. "Should be pointing it at her!"

"Say something like that about my daughter again, and I'll blow your fucking head off." He stared unblinkingly at Grayson with eyes like blue rocks, and took a few steps back. Once he'd decided they weren't a threat, the man turned to his little girl and hugged her. "Yeah, Emmie. Daddy's here," he said. "I'm here."

"Harman," Leon said. "Leave them alone. What if that was your girlfriend's kid?"

Grayson paused. Deflated. If that had been Sherry, Grayson thought, he would have done the same thing the man did.

"Those fuckin' things outside..." The man hugged Emma tightly. "Look what they did to us."

Neither Leon, Ada, or him said anything. The only sound was the rain pattering on the ground.

"You're both fucking cops," the man said, and looked at them with his hard blue eyes. He was still hugging Emma. "You should know something. _How_ did this happen?" Then he shouted, "Huh? How the _fuck_ did _this_ happen?"

Emma stared expressionlessly over her father's shoulder. One of her eyes was foggy; the other was normal, a warm brown that suggested kindness, when she'd still understood what kindness was. She rasped for her mother.

"Mommy's sleeping, honey. Okay?"

Emma stared; swayed in place.

Grayson shoved Leon away and limped ahead of Ada and him, through a chain-link gate that led into a narrow passage. He didn't want to see any more of Emma; it made him think of Sherry.

Pain flared in his leg, and Grayson slumped against the wet brickwork of the gun-shop. Someone had spray-painted a pentagram on the wall, accompanied by crude dicks, and an even cruder shout-out to some girl named Anna, who apparently gave the best head in Raccoon City.

Leon and Ada appeared a few minutes later. They walked on, onto a sort of ledge that overlooked the construction site for the subway expansion. From here, they walked onto a scaffold and made their way down, toward a large concrete sewer pipe cordoned off by yellow tape and rubber cones.

Ada started talking about Annette, and said she was responsible for Raccoon City.

"That's bullshit," Grayson said, limping behind them. Leon kept offering to help him, and Grayson kept shooing him away. "Annette had nothing to do with Raccoon City. You wanna blame someone, blame her husband, William."

Ada stopped walking. Looked at him. "So you know something," she said.

"Nothing concrete," Grayson said, and shook his head. "Just that William was apparently obsessed with his research. Even concerned Umbrella; they had their investigation committee issue a summons." He paused. "Unless that was the FBI's doing. Maybe you guys spurred them to investigate."

"My superiors don't tell me everything," Ada said, dismissively. "What else do you know about William's research. Do you know where he kept it?"

"No," he lied. "I don't. Sorry."


	21. Reunited, and it Feels so Good

It smelled of shit in the tunnel. The walls were waterstained, slick with sludge, and the run-off came up to their ankles. Grayson could feel it seeping into his shoes.

"So how'd you wind up on the force, Harman?" Leon asked, trudging along, his boots sloshing through a stew of garbage and rank water.

"Why does everyone care?" Grayson said.

Leon raised his eyebrows. "Huh?"

"Nothing," Grayson said, and shook his head. "Short of it? Sort of fell into it. My girlfriend was a cop."

Leon stopped walking. Stared at him, his forehead creasing. "I thought your girlfriend was Annette?"

"This ought to be good," Ada said, walking ahead of them.

"It's complicated," Grayson said at length.

"So which is it? Is Annette or this cop your girlfriend?"

"Both," Grayson said.

Ada laughed; but it was one of those derisive, reactionary laughs Grayson had, of late, become accustomed to. "Men," she said, "are never satisfied."

"It's not—it wasn't like that. Not at first," Grayson said. "I was dating Jill, the cop. Then Annette and I had a few too many drinks one night at Jack's Bar, and it… I got carried away, I guess."

"That's fucked, Harman," Leon said. "You don't 'guess'. You knew exactly what you were doing." His tone was all sorts of boy-scout indignation. Reminded Grayson of those guys he'd seen passing out Kinkos-printed pamphlets in front of the RPD, preaching about the evils of the modern world, and how its immorality pushed men and women away from The Good Lord Jesus, right into the sin-loving arms of Satan.

"I don't need a goddamn sermon, Kennedy," Grayson shot back. "Shove it up your ass."

"I'm just saying, it's not fair to—"

"Leon, shut up," Ada said. "It's his mess. Let him clean it up."

The tunnels went farther and farther down. Halogen strips bathed the brickwork in sickly grayish-green light. Cables snaked along the walls, coalescing into bundles of color-coded rubber that conjured, in Grayson's mind, anatomical images of the nervous system. Dead rats lay among the shoals of garbage piled along the concave walls, the brickwork glistening in a way evocative of pus.

The tunnel rumbled, as if something enormous had moved. Ada stopped walking and looked around. Leon pulled his gun, his eyes automatically scanning for trouble. Grayson, surprised by nothing at this point, just stood there with soggy socks and a nagging leg, leaning heavily on Leon.

Another rumble. It shook something viscous loose from the ceiling, which dripped onto Grayson like a string of snot; the pungent smell, whose stink was indescribable, made him gag.

"Harman," Leon said, and helped him sit against the wall. "We'll be back for you. Promise."

Something squelched under Grayson's ass, seeping through his pants. "Sure," he said, tasting vomit in his mouth. He turned his head and spat it on the ground. "Do whatever you gotta do."

"And if we don't come back," Ada said, watching him, "you're on your own."

"Your superiors need me, don't they?"

Ada didn't answer. Leon looked between them, confused.

"Don't worry about it," Grayson said to Leon. "Just go. I got my shotgun." The wall was wet, too; it soaked the back of his uniform.

"We'll be back, Harman." He started to walk away.

"Kennedy?"

Leon looked at him. "Yeah?"

"How come you joined the force?"

"To help people," Leon said, automatically. "It's cliché, I know. But… well, you asked."

Grayson nodded. "I did. Goddamn, you really are a rookie."

"Give me a few years, and I'll be as grizzled as you, Harman."

"Let's go, Leon," Ada said. "We need to find Annette."

"Just—don't hurt her, please."

"We won't, Harman," Leon said.

Ada didn't say anything.

Both of them had gone, and now Grayson sat there, alone, listening to rats skittering through the water, pipes dripping in the darkness. Trash floated in the run-off, sailing through grilles obstructing pitch-black tunnels.

Across the way, something shifted under a pile of grimy plastic and soggy cardboard. A man moaned, crawled out from under the trash, dressed in a reflective vest and waterproof coveralls, its skin bloated and gray. The zombie belly-crawled through the run-off; it was missing both of its legs. The top of its head glistened with jellied blood.

Once the thing came close enough, Grayson blew its head into a cloud of pink-red mist. Blood turned the run-off red, pieces of the zombie's brain and skull floating away in the whorls of sewage water.

He sagged against the wall. His leg felt like someone was repeatedly pounding a stake through it. _Has to be infected_ , he thought. _I may not have turned, but is this really the better fucking alternative_?

He closed his eyes and slept.

And woke to a sudden loud bang, something tramping through the water. It grabbed Grayson and started dragging him by his bad leg, and he screamed from the pain, hot tears stinging his eyes.

"Har… man," a guttural voice said, and something struck the side of Grayson's head, fireworks exploding across his vision.

The thing yanked him through a hole in a grille, the bars bent at odd angles. His vision was blurry, and he felt warm blood trickling down the side of his skull. Something like a giant eye glowed above him, shining like a hunter's moon. Then Grayson was thrown several feet, hit the wall with such an impact that parts of it crumbled away. Pain resonated down his spine as though each individual disc was vibrating, on the brink of shattering.

As his vision stabilized, Grayson saw the thing that attacked him. William Birkin—what remained of him. The whole right side of his body had swollen to immense size, his shoulder dominated by a swiveling orange eye the size of a basketball. His left side was still Birkin, a scrawny guy struggling under the weight of his mutation, in the scraps of a bloody lab coat and dress slacks.

Birkin swung a heavy lead pipe at Grayson, and Grayson barely managed to avoid it. He felt its slipstream, and when it struck the wall, the bricks exploded into dust and fragments.

"You… my wife," Birkin growled, and swung again, this time catching Grayson in the side.

Grayson howled as his ribs loudly cracked under the blow, splintering into the meat of his viscera. He landed in piss-warm run-off, the smell of shit in his nose, and he tasted it in his mouth. Birkin grabbed his ankle and started dragging Grayson through the sewage, the front of his body raking over jagged pieces of debris. The broken handle of a rusty tricycle punctured his stomach, and since Birkin was dragging him, it gashed him on an irregular diagonal, pouring blood into the water.

 _I'm going to die_ , he thought, as Birkin trawled him through the sewage. _I'm going to die, and Annette,_ _Sherry_...

He heard a gunshot. Then another. Then four more.

William howled, let him go. A woman called his name.

William was gone.

"Grayson!" the woman screamed. "Oh God. My—fucking God, there's so much blood."

He plunged into warm darkness.

When Grayson came around, he was lying in some kind of office—there was a chalkboard with shift rotations written on it—on a makeshift bed someone had cobbled together from boxes and tarpaulin, his wounds treated and bandaged. He was pretty sure he was still down in the sewer somewhere; he could smell it, though the stench—excluding himself, because he stank horrendously—was faint.

"I should be dead," he said aloud.

Annette hovered over him, incredulous. "You should be," she agreed. She looked tired—more tired than she'd ever looked before—and relieved. Her lab coat was rumpled, her hair coming loose from its braid.

Grayson dragged her down into a kiss without a word, and they kissed for a long time, the only sound, other than the rush of distant water, the faint smack of their lips.

Annette pulled away from him and said, "I don't know how you're alive."

"I don't either," he said, and kissed her again.

She kissed him for a few seconds, got a hold of herself, and gently pushed him away. "We don't have time for this, Grayson," Annette said, and stepped away. "There's too much that needs doing."

"How about me? I need doing," he joked. Annette didn't laugh. "Sorry," he added. "Look, I—"

His radio crackled. Leon, but he sounded like he was hurting bad. "Harman," he said, his voice fizzing over the line. "If you see Annette Birkin, stay away. She's armed and dangerous. She shot me. Ada's gone. Annette might have killed her."

Grayson looked at Annette. "I'll keep that in mind, boot. Thanks. You holding up?"

"I think I'll live," Leon said. "Been in and out of it. Good to hear your voice again, Harman."

"You too, Kennedy. Look, I have to go. Think I hear zombies coming."

"Got it. Radio me when you can."

Once Leon was off the line, Grayson asked Annette, "You shot the rookie?"

"I was trying to shoot Wong," Annette said, folding her arms across her chest. She started pacing. "Kennedy, was it? He jumped in front of Wong. Took the bullet instead, the dumb kid."

"Wong?"

"Ada," Annette said, and stopped pacing. She looked at him. Clicked her tongue. "Don't tell me you bought her bullshit, Grayson. I thought you were smarter than that."

"What bullshit?"

"She give you that spiel about being FBI?" Annette said, and laughed derisively. "She's a mercenary, Grayson. She wants to sell the G-Virus."

Grayson watched the lights flickering on a control panel. A laminate sheet was taped to it, reminding someone named Ted to watch the water pressure, the city didn't want another line bursting. And an addendum reminding Ted to stop taking the note-writer's lunch. "You know," he said at length, "I had this funny feeling her story was bullshit."

"Well, now you know it is," Annette said.

"But the G-Virus?" Grayson looked at her. "Kennedy mentioned it. Ben Bertolucci was asking about it in an interview." He paused. "That why you had us toss Ben into jail?"

"He was trespassing. Conveniently, having him in a cell also kept him from poking around." She frowned, stared at the ground between her cherry-red flats. "You know how Umbrella is, Grayson." Annette looked at him, her eyes huge and sad. "I had to protect Sherry."

"I get it. Besides, it doesn't matter anymore. RPD's gone. Is the G-Virus why William… mutated?"

Annette told him the story. How William had tried to broker a deal with the US military behind Umbrella's back, how Umbrella had sent the USS to apprehend him and his research, and how a rookie with an itchy trigger-finger had shot him.

"This," she continued, "was after I'd served him the divorce papers. I guess William figured he had nothing to left to lose, so he made a bold gamble. And lost." She leaned against an aluminum desk cluttered with papers. "I could have prevented all of this, Grayson," she said. "I could have shot William. I was there when he'd injected himself. But I just… I couldn't do it."

"He was your husband, Annette. I get it."

Annette nodded.

"There's no point thinking about what-ifs," Grayson said, and stood up. His whole body hurt, but the pain was manageable; Annette must have given him some sort of analgesic. "What's done is done. Right now, we need to find Sherry. She was at the RPD, last I heard. Pretty sure she'd gone underground."

"She didn't stay at the house?" Annette said, alarmed.

"We'll find her, Annette."

Annette nodded slowly.

"It's a good thing she didn't stay at the house," Grayson told her. "You've been down here since it all started. Raccoon City's gone, Annette. Swarmed with zombies. If Sherry had stayed put, she would have died."

"We would've gone back for her," Annette snapped.

"And what if things had gone south, and we'd died? Then she would've definitely died, waiting for people who weren't ever going to come." He frowned, moved closer to her. "Besides, why are you just worrying about her now? You've been hiding underground since shit hit the fan."

"I've been researching the G-Virus. Taking notes. Seeing how fast it's spreading." She looked at him, hard. "This virus can't get out of Raccoon City, Grayson. You don't understand what's at stake."

"I got a pretty good idea," he said. "And you know what? I don't give a shit about anyone but you and Sherry, Annette."

"This is more than that, Grayson. You don't understand the gravity of the situation."

"You know Dunbar's number?"

"Monkeysphere theory, yes," Annette said. "And I get that Sherry and I are part of your monkeysphere, Grayson. But the circumstances are dire. William needs to be stopped, and the G-Virus needs to be eliminated. Completely. This problem is bigger than yours or my monkeysphere. Much bigger."

"Let's find Sherry first, and then we'll worry about the fucking virus," Grayson said. "And while we're doing that, you can give me the dirty on the shit you've been doing in NEST. Capeesh?"

"Grayson—"

"Annette," he interrupted. Grayson stroked her cheek and said, "We're gonna be married after this. Husbands and wives, they don't keep things from each other." He went quiet, then said, "The situation with William aside."

"Okay," Annette said, and squeezed his arm.


	22. All Roads Lead to NEST

They were walking along a canal of murky water. Though the smell of the sewers still lingered, it was fainter here—a controlled stink. Like a wastewater treatment facility. Which struck him as pretty weird; far as Grayson knew, treatment facilities were supposed to be above ground.

 _Then again_ , he thought, _this is Umbrella. They probably built it to process chemical waste, or some shit_. He looked at Annette. "So you've been down here, monitoring the spread of the G-Virus?"

"That's right," she said, walking alongside him. "It's important I keep a record of how fast the G-colonies spread, the rate of infection... If something happens, someone else can pick up where I'd left off."

"Nothing's gonna happen, Annette. Not as long as I'm here."

Annette smiled unconvincingly. "Sure, Grayson," she said, and nodded. She ran her tongue over her teeth, then said, "Always admired that about you. That sense of invincibility. Wish I had something like that."

"After nearly dying twice? I'm not invincible," he said. "Just stupid and determined."

"Maybe that's close enough." 

"How'd you find me, Annette? Dumb luck?"

She shook her head, glancing at the water-stained concrete underneath their feet. Silverfish and roaches skittered from the cracks. Annette shook a huge roach off her shoe, then kicked it into the canal. "When that cop—Kennedy—showed up with Wong, he tried to talk me down by namedropping you. Usual deescalation tactics. Said you were down here, looking for me." She looked at him. "And I've been tracking William. Bugged him. So maybe… maybe it was just dumb luck."

"He mentioned you," Grayson said. "Not like… a human would mention someone. It was like a coherent thought bubbling up from a thick stew of incoherent thoughts."

"There's still traces of William inside that monster," Annette said. "But he can't be saved. And soon, he won't even remember he's William Birkin. It'll just be the monster. Just G."

He looked at the gun in her hand. Grayson recognized the gun; it was the standard sidearm of the USS, and looked strange and heavy in Annette's soft scientist's hand. And since Annette had never owned a gun in her life, he guessed she'd nabbed it off one of the guys who'd shot William. "You gonna shoot him?" he asked.

"Not with this," Annette said, glancing at the gun. "All this does is piss G off." She slipped the gun into the waistband of her jeans, the grip slanted across the small of her back. "I've been developing a more potent, acid-based derivative of P-Epsilon, an anti-B.O.W compound. Should do the trick."

"How're you gonna work that?"

"Modified flare-gun," Annette told him. "Each cartridge contains a payload of P-Epsilon, and shatters on impact. Theoretically, the P-Epsilon should weaken G—severely. Slows its regenerative process. In theory. Enough for more conventional weapons to be employed. In theory."

"So basically it stops him— _it_ , I mean—from healing really fast. And then if you lob, say, a couple grenades at it, it's bye-bye G."

"In theory," Annette said.

"How close are you to finishing it?"

Annette shrugged. "Hard to say," she said. "NEST has been overrun with zombies. I'm safe enough in my laboratory, but—"

"Wait, so you _knew_ about the zombies?"

"Only the ones down here, Grayson. Like you'd pointed out before, I haven't been up for air in weeks."

The roar of the canal filled the tunnel. Things were better maintained in this part of the sewers; Grayson barely saw any graffiti, rats, or garbage. Some of the concrete looked new; it didn't quite match the color of the older concrete, which had turned blackish-green. "Where are we going, Annette?"

"NEST," she said.

Grayson stopped, grabbed her shoulder. "We need to find Sherry," he said.

"Sherry's fine," Annette said, and pulled her shoulder away.

Grayson was trying his very best to understand her, but the way Annette didn't seem the least bit concerned about Sherry was beginning to grate on him. "She's twelve-years-old, Annette," he snapped. "You really think a twelve-year-old's capable of handling a hoard of fucking zombies?"

"Sherry is fine," Annette repeated.

"You're really starting to piss me off, Annette."

"Then I guess I'll just have to live with that," she shot back. "So go ahead, Grayson. Go. I'll head to NEST myself. William needs to be stopped." She went quiet. Stared at him for a long, uncomfortable stretch of time. Water roared. Pipes rattled. Lights hummed. Unseen rats skittered and chirped. "Even," she added shakily, "if that means losing you."

He stood there, silent.

"So what will it be, Grayson?" Annette asked. Though her voice conveyed conviction, her eyes betrayed fear—fear of losing him.

"After losing Alexia—I was pretty sure I'd never be happy again." He squeezed her hands and smiled. "You changed that." Grayson kissed her knuckles, the heels of her palms. "I love you. You and Sherry."

Annette kissed him, long and with passion, and said, "We can talk about this later, Grayson. I promise. Let's focus on reaching NEST for now." She slipped her hands from his, into the pockets of her dirty lab coat. "There's a cable-car not far from here. It was being used by a construction team before things went sideways."

"Lead on," Grayson said.


	23. Very Specific Interests

When Annette had come back from somewhere and explained the G-Virus, and G's reproductive process to him—how Sherry factored into it—Grayson sat there in silence. A moth had somehow found its way underground, plinking repeatedly against the light fixture above his head.

They were in some kind of wastewater office with concrete walls, an aluminum desk with a fold-out chair and computer, and a whiteboard with a diagram drawn on it in dry-erase marker.

"So… Wil— _G_ —looks for someone of… shared genetics?" He paused. "It inbreeds?" Grayson stared at Annette, her face unreadable. "Isn't that counterproductive to what the G-Virus is supposed to achieve? Evolution?" He straightened up in his seat and put his hands on his knees. "Inbreeding's not gonna evolve shit, Annette. You know what you get from inbreeding? _E_ _l Hachizado_. The fucking Hapsburgs. Alexei Romanov with his fucking hemophilia. That's what you get."

"The mutation wasn't supposed to be unstable," Annette told him, lighting a cigarette and leaning against the desk. "The G-Virus still wasn't complete. It was supposed to create better humans, and reproduction is necessary for better humans to pass on their better genes." She blew smoke, watching the cloud disperse on a draft of ventilated air. "But it didn't work out that way. We didn't have enough time to complete the research. Umbrella had ceased funding the project because of the investigation committee's inquiries, and the money was running out. William was getting desperate, rushing things, making mistakes. And then the USS showed up, and—well, you know the rest."

Grayson nodded. "Yeah," he agreed, watching silverfish scuttling across the worn tile.

"While we're on the subject of 'better humans'," Annette said, gazing at him, "I'm starting to wonder a few things about you."

He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. "Nothing to know." Grayson shook his head. "I'm nobody special."

"Bullshit," Annette said. "Your injuries should have killed you, Grayson. You'd lost enormous amounts of blood."

He frowned, thought back to Ada and how she'd said something similar. About how he was immune to the T-Virus. He told Annette.

" _What_?"

"I was bitten by a zombie. Before Ada found me."

Annette pursed her lips.

"I'm not sure why I didn't turn," he said.

"Some people are naturally immune to the T-Virus," Annette said. "But you'd have better odds at being abducted by aliens." She knelt in front of him, their eyes meeting. A bruise was blooming on Annette's right cheek, a cut curdling above her left eye. "Did Alexia do something to you?" she asked seriously. "Did she figure something out that the rest of us didn't?"

"Alexia never did anything to me," Grayson said. "She did the complete opposite. Did everything in her power to keep me outta Umbrella's cross-hairs."

"Probably because you'd be of interest to the company," she remarked.

"Probably," he agreed.

"Do you remember anything?" Annette asked. "About how this immunity might've come about, I mean."

Grayson thought about it, but couldn't remember anything specific. In Antarctica, the only time he'd really encountered the lab nerds on their turf was when he'd gone to the medical wing for his annual check-ups and immunizations. He couldn't even remember any specific faces. Just people in lab coats speaking in a creole language which consisted of medical jargon, Umbrella terminology and protocols, and bits of plain English. He recounted the experience to Annette.

Annette finished her cigarette; then flicked it to the ground and crushed it under the toe of her shoe. "Maybe you're just lucky," she said. "Won the genetic lottery."

Grayson shrugged.

"You're definitely healthier than the average guy," Annette said. "A little too perfect, honestly." She tipped her head on one side, studying him. "It's like someone handpicked your genetics."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Eugenics."

"I'm not some kinda eugenics experiment."

Annette didn't say anything.

"I'm not an experiment," Grayson said, feeling defensive. "I'm just lucky, Annette. My dad isn't a fucking eugenicist."

"Maybe not," Annette said. "But Edward Ashford was. Alexander, his son, felt pretty much the same way. Why genetics fascinated him so much." She shrugged. "But I'm sorry." Annette gave a warm but threadbare smile. "I didn't mean to offend you, Grayson."

Annette didn't need to tell him how the Ashfords felt about genetics. Alfred was pretty vocal about curating the Ashford bloodline, which was why he'd always taken offense—even if he'd hidden his disagreements for Alexia's sake—at Grayson's interest in Alexia, and the fact it was reciprocated by his sister, who, by all accounts, was a pedigreed girl who should have wanted a pedigreed boy, not some American mutt.

"It's fine, Annette," he said, finally. "I'm aware of the Ashfords' reputation."

They left the office and walked deeper underground. Annette seemed to know her way around, and led him through a series of concrete tunnels webbed with rubber cables and PVC pipes, and coils of alloy wire secured by zip-ties. Ventilation fans rattled in their nacelles. Sodium vapors flooded the tunnels, emanating from humming tubes.

Then he smelled weeks-old garbage and the cisterns; the stink made his eyes water. It seemed whatever this place was, it didn't just treat wastewater; it also, it seemed, treated trash and chemical refuse from NEST.

They entered some kind of control room with plexiglass windows, and terminals bristling with levers, buttons and switches. It overlooked a pit heaped with trash. Below, an inert conveyor spanned the pit, some kind of industrial trash compactor on one end of it. Ada stood on the conveyor belt, her coat and sunglasses gone, looking up at Annette.

"Enough with this cat and mouse game!" Ada shouted at her.

"The game is over," Annette said, over the loudspeaker. "You lost." She tapped a large, red button on one of the terminals.

"Tell me, Annette," Ada said. "Is your husband still alive? Or did you kill him, so you could take credit for G?"

Grayson watched Annette's expression cool. "Interesting theory," she said, throwing a switch and yanking a ball-joint lever. The compactor lurched, rumbled upward, moved toward Ada with a mechanical whine. Annette controlled it like one of those claw-machines in arcades.

"Annette," Grayson said. "Maybe just let her go. She saved my life."

"Too risky."

"If you don't cooperate," Ada shouted to Annette, "I'll get a sample from the NEST."

"Over my dead body," Annette shot back, jerking the lever to the right. The compactor swung toward Ada and dropped, grinding against the conveyor belt. Ada ran like someone had scorched her ass with an oxyacetylene torch.

Grayson heard a thump, something snap and break. Then nothing.

"Should keep her busy for the time being," Annette said. "If she's not dead."

"You knew Ada was gonna be in here," Grayson said.

Annette looked at him, let go of the lever. "Yeah," she admitted. "I did."

"How?"

"I tried to burn her alive in an incinerator. Earlier."

Grayson stared. "What?"

Annette just smirked.

Grayson started to wonder if he had a very specific fetish for blonde women with violent streaks, and decided he probably did. Wesker had been right, all those months ago.


	24. Interlude

"I don't mean to interrupt this very interesting story, Grayson—but Annette tried to burn this Ada woman alive?"

Grayson moved his pawn two squares on the antique chessboard. "That's right."

"I can't believe it."

"I couldn't either," he said.

"Violent predilections aside, I will say one thing about Annette that never surprised me: her perception."

"Yeah, Annette was always sharp. Your move."

The move was made. Two of his pawns vanished. "You haven't gotten over her yet, have you?"

He hesitated. "No," he said at length. "Not yet." Grayson moved his knight. Then realized, too late, he'd opened a line to his king, which would put it in check. "Shit."

The check was made with the black bishop. "You need to get over that. Her. She's dead."

"I'm working on it."

"Are you?"

"Sort of."

A frustrated sigh. "Think of it as trading in an old car for a much nicer one."

"That doesn't help at all."

"I tried."

"Yeah, well, maybe you should stop trying. You tried to kill me already. Isn't that enough? Haven't you gotten all your petty anger out?"

"No."

He sighed, this time. "'Course not. Why would you?"

"Are you going to take your turn, or are we going to stare at this chessboard until kingdom come?"

Grayson moved his rook to protect his king from check.

"What ever happened to Nikolai? That Jill woman? Carlos?"

"Not sure."

"And Jill? Carlos?"

"Ran into them later. You gonna take your turn?"

The turn was taken, and once again, his king was in jeopardy. The fingers of silk gloves tapped rhythmically on the chessboard. "What of Nemesis? He shows up in the beginning of your story, then simply vanishes."

"I never saw Nemesis after that. So I guess its dead," Grayson said. "It wasn't after me. It was after S.T.A.R.S."

"Birkin?"

"Ran into him a couple of times. I'll get to those eventually. Now shut it, lemme think here." He pondered his next move, staring at his white chess-pieces. Decided to move his other knight, to protect his king.

"You know, chess tells a lot about someone. You play so defensively, Grayson. So defensively, you make no progress on the board, and your every move is predictable. You consistently retreat from your problems. Or use others to shield yourself from them, just to buy a little more time."

"You're not my fucking therapist."

"I'm the only bloody thing you've got in this world, Grayson. You're doing it again. Playing defensively."

Grayson exhaled. Shifted in his chair.

"And…" Inhalation, exhalation. The rustle of silk. "You're the only bloody thing _I've_ got. Still, I'm not going to coddle you. Annette isn't coming back, and you pining for her isn't going to change a damned thing, darling." Traces of hurt, of reluctant admission, in her voice.

"Let's just focus on the game."

"Fine." Another move was made; one of his rooks disappeared. "Anyway, your story. You were talking about that sewage facility, right after Annette tried to kill that Ada woman."


	25. Relentless Bill

"Do you really think I'm some kinda eugenics experiment?" The idea had been nagging him since Annette had posited it.

They were somewhere in the sewers, and still, it seemed, no closer to NEST. But Annette conducted herself like someone who knew her way around. He followed her across an expansion-grate walkway spanning an enormous wastewater cistern.

"It's only a theory," Annette said, walking ahead of him, hands in the pockets of her lab coat, her thin shoulders hunched.

"Do you know something, Annette?"

She stopped walking. Turned and looked at him. Annette shook her head and said, "No. Umbrella considers me 'non-essential personnel', and keeps me out of their higher research." She frowned, scowling; though she wasn't scowling at him. She was scowling a someone in her head. "I'm, as far as Umbrella is concerned, a glorified assistant. Never mind the contributions I'd made to G-Virus research. But they don't care about that." Annette sighed. Looked down at the expansion-grate; then looked at him. "I'm an expendable asset. I'm not Alexia or William. Umbrella doesn't give a shit about what happens to me. But that doesn't matter—what matters is stopping the G-Virus."

"Things might change," Grayson said. "Alexia's dead. William's dead—in a manner of speaking. You're the only person left who knows anything about the G-Virus. Far as I can see, your value to the company just skyrocketed."

"If I get out of this, I'm done with Umbrella." Her eyes bored into him, her gaze defiant and anxious, and full of gravity. "That means you've gotta be done with it, too." She stepped closer. "Alfred will assume you'd died in the outbreak." Annette pressed her palms against his chest, against the grimy once-blue tatters of his RPD uniform, and that told him what she wanted to say.

Grayson hesitated, staring at her hands. "I—" the idea of leaving Alfred ate him, because he wasn't sure Alfred, in his current state, could handle that—"Alfred needs me, Annette. I can't… I can't just leave him. My dad's dying. Alexia already died. If I die, too, then Alfred might—I'm not sure what he'd do. He's got nobody, Annette. Nobody. Not a fucking soul but me who cares whether he's alive or dead."

"Grayson, I don't want to make you choose—but it's either Alfred, or Sherry and I."

He said nothing.

"Sherry's been through enough," Annette said, locking eyes with him. "Umbrella has put her through enough. She's going to need a lot of help to work through the trauma. And she can't get that help if I stay with Umbrella." She frowned, her fingertips tracing the hard curve of his cheekbone. "I lost everything. I could still lose Sherry, if William finds her, and I stand to lose you, too. I'm not making you make this choice because I enjoy hurting you, Grayson. On the contrary—I hate hurting you. But this is for Sherry." She stepped away and regarded him soberly. "Besides, Umbrella will never fully trust me again. Not after the stunt William pulled. So they'd probably kill me anyway."

He nodded, saying nothing.

"Just think about it, Grayson. We can start over fresh, once this is all over." Annette smiled; but the smile, like all her smiles of late, was threadbare. "I could get a professorship at a nice university with my credentials." The smile, slowly, became more genuine, as though the idea of becoming a professor at some university sounded like the best thing in the world to her. "Something stable and safe, where I'm off every weekend, and I can come home every night to spend time with you and Sherry. You could go back to writing. No more law-enforcement. No more buttling. Hell, you could write about what happened here in Raccoon City and probably live off the royalties."

Now it was his turn to smile—for the first time in a long while. "Can you imagine me on Good Morning America, talking about my survival experience in Raccoon City?" He laughed.

"You'd be so awkward. You're always awkward when there's a camera on you."

"That's why I make it a point to always be behind it."

* * *

Another move was made on the chessboard; his rook vanished, slain by a knight. "Must we really go into detail about you and Annette?" Tinge of jealousy, of anger, in her voice.

"I thought you weren't gonna interrupt the story," Grayson said, and moved his pawn one space.

"I wasn't. Until you started talking about that bloody woman again."

"You wanted the full story, and we've got plenty of time to kill. Your move."

"Right now, the only thing I want to kill is you," she said icily, and her rook overtook his bishop.

"You've gotten crankier." Grayson managed to finally take one of her pawns with his pawn. And watched that pawn swiftly vanish, opening a line to his king. "Fucking—how do you keep goddamn doing that?"

"Skill," she said. "Your turn. And can we please skip past the Annette business to something more interesting? Like William, or that spy woman. Honestly, I sort of like that spy woman. I feel like we'd have gotten on. Ada, was it?"

"You would like someone like that." He rolled his eyes, moved his king. "And bullshit, you wouldn't have gotten on with her. You don't get on with anyone. You're too bitchy and egotistical for most folks to handle." Grayson grinned.

"And violent." A perfect, white smile. She moved her pawn, clearly setting up some kind of play on the board. "But I didn't hear you complaining about my disposition when you were fucking my brains out not, what—an hour ago?"

"Forty-seven minutes," he corrected, and moved his king back. "And of course I wasn't complaining about your disposition. You were moaning my name, and clearly very happy."

"All this talk of moaning is making me hot, darling. Shall we take a… break?"

"You wanted a story, right?"

"Yes, but now I want something else—a hint: it's in your pants."

He snorted. "And I was the 'crude' one. Take a cold shower. I was telling a story."

"The way you toy with me makes me both extremely horny and extremely angry," she huffed, and moved another pawn. "I hope something interesting happens in this bloody story of yours. More interesting than what would have happened in the bed." 

"Something does. William shows up."

* * *

William came out of nowhere, from the other side of the cistern. He lumbered toward them, snarling like an animal, dragging his enormous claw along the expansion-grate with a noise like nails on chalkboard.

He looked even less human than before. G had overgrown William like a pink, wet fungus; his head, barely recognizable in its current state, looked like the remnants of a conjoined twin who doctors had been unable to fully excise. What now served as the creature's head was a skull-like thing covered in sinewy, intestinal-pink flesh, its eyes gleaming like bike reflectors, its mouth a sphincter-like hole bristling with needles.

Grayson barely managed to push Annette out of the way, catching the tip of the creature's claw in his arm. Blood gushed from a two-inch gash on his bicep.

Annette shot the creature three times; but the bullets only pissed it off. It sprinted toward her, a guttural roar bubbling up from its guts, squeezing through the sphincter-mouth like a wet fart.

Grayson shot it twice with his shotgun, blowing away two huge chunks of its claw. It whipped around and charged, swung at him, but he avoided the claw this time—and tumbled off the bridge, into the cistern below.

The water was murky. Something heavy crashed into the water, and he saw the monster's reflector eyes emerging from the darkness. Grayson kicked off G, using the momentum to twist around and breach the surface. Annette was on the bridge, screaming, "There's a ladder! Go to the ladder!"

He saw it on the far side of the cistern. Grayson swam, G thrashing around and roaring in the water behind him. Something sharp tore open his calf, and he couldn't feel his leg.

Reaching the ladder, Grayson hoisted himself out of the cistern and scrambled up the rungs along a slanted concrete bank, onto a platform with WARNING painted in flaking yellow latex paint. Then limped toward another ladder bolted to the framework of the bridge, which would take him back up to Annette, and climbed—with difficulty.

G scrabbled out of the water. Annette shot it a few times, then shouted, "We need to get to NEST! This gun's not gonna do shit to it!"

The creature jumped onto the bridge in a single vault. Grayson came up behind it and blew out its legs with his shotgun. G pitched forward with a squeal, wriggling on the expansion-grate. Then he half ran, half limped after Annette.

* * *

"Let me guess," she said, pondering her next move. "William recovered from his injuries?"

"Eventually."

"What ever happened to the G-Virus?" She finally decided to move her bishop; his knight disappeared from the board.

"I'll get to that. You don't like spoilers, right?"

She regarded him with ice-blue eyes; the iciness of their color heightened the iciness of her gaze. It was like looking into winter. "No, I suppose I don't," she said decidedly. "Though I might make an exception."

"Don't rush the road-trip by skipping to the rest stop right before the final exit." Grayson moved his knight, and surprised her when he'd taken one of her rooks. He grinned, feeling a bit smug and triumphant.

"That's a terrible metaphor. I thought you were a writer."

"I never said I was a good one," he pointed out.

She chuckled. "Perhaps I'll be able to find what's left of William's research. I'm competent, unlike him; I could do wonderful things with the G-Virus."

"No," he said, automatically. "Leave it alone."

"Don't want to break your promise to Annette, I reckon."

"Something like that. And the G-Virus is too unstable, too unpredictable. Leave it be."

"You underestimate me, Grayson."

"And you underestimate the G-Virus. Just trust me. Don't do it."

She raised an eyebrow. "And why not?"

"If William wasn't enough of a reason?" He shook his head.


	26. Genetic Voodoo

"He tore open your leg pretty badly," Annette said clinically.

Grayson hadn't looked at the wound yet, but it definitely felt deep, and if it wasn't for the analgesics, or whatever genetic voodoo was going on inside him, it would have probably hurt like a bitch.

He lay on his belly, on a makeshift cot, while Annette changed the gauze again. They were in her laboratory, and it smelled like antiseptic and silicon. Wires, cables, and fat rubber tubes webbed the ceiling. High-end biomedical equipment hummed and whirred like synthetic woodwinds, and the air was cool, almost chilly. Somewhere above him, a vent rattled, pumping enriched recycled oxygen into the air, and he imagined he could taste it, and it tasted like ozone.

"How deep?" he asked, finally.

"To the bone."

"Shit."

"It's already starting to heal."

Grayson stared at the lights blinking on a terminal opposite him, chin resting on his arms. His leg felt like phantom limb syndrome; the analgesics had kicked in, several milligrams of opioid swaddling his nerves like a warm, comfortable blanket. On a monitor, the Umbrella logo rotated like a wheel, broke apart into eight wedges, and came back together again. The animation looped indefinitely, until Annette made it go away with the press of a key. She stared at the indecipherable hieroglyphs which constituted the nerd-language of Advanced Science, expressionless.

"You think William's gonna find us here?" he asked.

They'd been right around the corner from the cable car, back down in the sewers, when William had come out of nowhere, fully rejuvenated and ready to rip them into pieces. He'd capped William's knees again, which had bought them enough time to get away in the cable car and reach NEST.

"Without a doubt," Annette said, tapping something out on the keyboard. "He's just busy right now."

"Busy with what? Redecorating his new sewer palace?"

"Finding Sherry." Annette's mouth became a thin, hard line. A little crease appeared in her forehead.

Grayson looked at her. "And we're just gonna sit here?"

"I gave you some powerful painkillers," Annette told him. "You're not in any shape to go anywhere right now."

She wasn't wrong. Whatever Annette had given him, it kicked like a horse. He felt dizzy, intensely nauseous, like he was permanently teetering on the brink of vomiting, but never actually able to vomit. "What the fuck did you give me? Elephant tranqs?" Grayson curled up into a ball, his urge to vomit mounting. He tried, but nothing came up.

"Some experimental opioids," Annette said, and walked away from the terminal, picking up a clipboard and leafing through the pages. She ran her tongue over her teeth. "Used in Project W. Pain was… a pretty common side-effect."

* * *

"Annette was aware of Project W?"

"Guess so. But it wasn't like she knew specific details," Grayson said, waiting for the instant coffee to boil on the portable stove. In the room they were in, power was at a minimum, running on an auxiliary grid dedicated to the comms equipment, the lights, and the heater system. The only entertainment they had was the chessboard; but he'd needed a break, mostly because he was a sore loser. "Apparently she'd learned about the program because William had let it slip one night, after one too many beers. Why are you so interested in this all of a sudden, Lex?"

"Are you still sore about it?" she asked, and tilted her head like a cat.

"The fact I'm a breeding experiment? Yeah, I am sore about it." He removed the pot from the portable stove and poured the coffee into two hand-painted porcelain cups. "I'm not a fucking stallion on a stud farm. Or a goddamn dog people breed for purebreds puppies to put in a goddamn show."

"It's hardly a stud farm. Umbrella—Spencer, specifically—wants superhumans," she said casually, and sipped her coffee. "The breeding thing wasn't part of Project W. That was Martin Wesker's idea, a separate eugenics project originally funded by my grandfather. And my father agreed to use me as your bloody broodmare."

"How does this not fucking bother you as much as it bothers me?"

"Because there's no point in getting angry about it. Martin Wesker's gone, my grandfather's dead, my father's dead, and Spencer is dying. The project is effectively dead in the water." She paused, sipped her coffee again. "Besides," she continued, "it does anger me. I'm nobody's broodmare, Grayson." Alexia regarded him icily from across the table, her ruby, her family proof, glittering like a drop of wet blood on her neck.

"I never said you were anything but Alexia," Grayson pointed out, and sipped his own coffee. It tasted stale, vaguely chemical. He wondered how long the coffee tin had been sitting in the pantry. "But aren't you worried?"

"Worried about what?"

"We've—"

"Had sex," she finished. "Multiple times. I know. But I'm rather confident the T-Veronica's rendered me sterile." She didn't sound too confident, and Grayson didn't know how to feel about that. "Father never considered I'd ever experiment on myself. So much for his breeding plans."

"Right." He noisily slurped his coffee, watching the lights on the comms terminal behind her.

"Can we get back to bloody chess, and to the story?"

Grayson straightened up in his chair, stretched his long legs. "Sure. After my coffee."

Alexia rolled her eyes.

* * *

"How are you feeling, Grayson?"

"A little better, Annette," he said, and sat up. His head ached. "Got a massive headache, though. How long was I out?"

"Two hours," Annette said, scribbling in a notebook. "I've been running a few tests," she added, pacing.

"What sort of tests?"

"Too many to go over right now," she said, and shook her head, gnawing on the end of her pen. "But I've found something interesting." Annette looked at him. "Your antibody count's off the charts, and you're regenerating tissue several times faster than an average person."

"We've already established some weird shit is going on," he said.

"I can modify the process to do the opposite to William. With my P-Epsilon derivative, I mean," she said, and grinned, snapping the notebook shut. Annette slid the pen into the breast-pocket of her lab coat. "Instead of regenerating, it'll break down his cells. Make him weaker. Weak enough to take him out for good."

"That's great," he said, watching her.

"I've taken a blood sample from you," she said. "It's necessary. I need to extrapolate a sample of the virus from it. I may need more, fair warning."

"That's fine."

Annette bit her bottom lip. "Good." She laid the notebook on a workspace, where a microscope and computer sat, and on the wall were pinned several karyotypes. She sat down on the tall upholstered stool and started leafing through papers, folders, fat packets of print-outs.

"You really think this acid weapon is gonna work?" he asked.

"It's all I've got right now," Annette said. "William's gonna keep mutating. Before that happens, I need to stop it."

Grayson watched the bubbles in an empty aquarium tank set in the wall, and wondered what sort of fish had once lived in there. Beyond the glass partition which separated Annette's laboratory from the rest of the room, racks of weird capsules, like warheads waiting to be deployed, glowed neon blue, and creepy, misshapen lumps floated in tall glass tubes.

"What're those things in the tubes, Annette?"

"Failed G-Virus experiments." Annette turned to the computer and tapped something out. Then fished a pack of Virginia Slims from her lab coat and lit one with a blue disposable lighter. "Hey, Grayson?"

"Yeah?"

"Did Alexia ever tell you about Project W?" Annette looked at him, her right hand on the mouse wired to the computer. Smoke billowed from her cigarette, catching on the ventilation and dissipating.

Grayson shook his head. "Nothing," he said. "She never told me much, honestly. About Umbrella, I mean. 'The less I knew, the better', was something she liked to say." Grayson stood, wobbled, caught himself on the edge of the makeshift cot, which, he realized, had been fashioned from a table. The room, for several moments, spun. "Goddamn, what the fuck's in these painkillers."

"Strong stuff," Annette said. Then, "Maybe Alexia didn't know anything about it either. Seems strange, though. She was an Ashford."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Eugenics," she said. "Like I told you before, the Ashfords were huge supporters of eugenics."

"Maybe Alexander figured she wasn't old enough for the 'eugenics talk'," Grayson joked, easing down on the makeshift cot.

Annette didn't say anything. She was staring at her computer, clicking her mouse.

* * *

"When did this bloody story stop being about Raccoon City and William, and start being about me?"

"You wanted all the details, right?" They'd returned to their chess game. Grayson moved one of his pawns. "But don't worry. I'll get back to Raccoon City. Eventually."

"Why was Annette so interested in me?" Alexia moved her knight.

"In a way, I think she kinda looked up to you," Grayson said, moving his rook.

Alexia stared at him, said, "How touching," and finally moved one of her pawns.

"You were a literal child when you'd gotten Chief Researcher. Who wouldn't respect that? Even if your genetically-modified intelligence gene sorta makes you a cheater." Grayson gave her a shit-eating grin. "Ill-gotten gains," he teased, and maneuvered his bishop, taking one of her pawns. But Alexia retaliated by taking his bishop with her knight. Grayson sighed.

"I earned my way through university," she said haughtily. "I simply made use of the tools Alexander supplied me with. Namely, a very good brain."


	27. I Know a Little Something

"Grayson, I need you to get something for me."

He looked up from a battered, dog-eared copy of _The Partner_ by John Grisham, which he'd found in the lab. He didn't like John Grisham; but, like the decades-old magazines and Harlequin romances found in every doctor's or dentist's office, it passed the time. "What's up?"

Annette had been sitting at her workspace for hours, poring over notebooks, staring into her microscope, working the various machines. Sometimes she'd leave her workspace to make coffee, or to draw another sample of his blood; but for the most part, she worked tirelessly, mechanically—on auto-pilot—and didn't pay him any mind. "I need another canister of P-Epsilon," she told him. "It's in the cold lab, in the east area."

"That's on the other side of NEST," Grayson said, tossing _The Partner_ onto his makeshift cot.

"I need this," Annette said, looking up from her high-powered microscope. And, right then, he felt a sense of intense déjà vu—of Alexia looking up from her high-powered microscope, in similar fashion. "I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't important, Grayson," Alexia said.

"I know you wouldn't."

"You all right?"

Grayson rubbed his eyes, and Alexia was Annette again. "Yeah," he said. "I'm good."

"So will you do it?"

"I'll do it." Grayson grabbed his shotgun. "I'm feeling better."

Annette smiled.

"Keep your gun close, Annette."

"I will."

Grayson nodded.

He stepped through the automatic door, which sealed shut behind him, and waited for the decontamination protocol to cycle the anti-bacterial lights, the shower to hose the microbes off him, the fans to dry him off. And felt a little cleaner. After days without a hot shower, or a clean change of clothes, decontam was the next best thing—a veritable bubble-bath and glass of scotch, considering.

Grayson made his way over the expansion-grate bridge which connected Annette's lab to NEST's main shaft. The main shaft was cavernous, the concrete walls studded with halogen lights. If viewed from above, it probably looked like a wagon wheel: bridges, built on retractable magnetic tracks, connected the central shaft to NEST's other wings, like spokes. An enormous reactor of some kind sat below; it made him uneasy. He felt like it would blow at any moment.

Grayson scanned his wristband, which Annette had given him and had upgraded to senior staff-level access—the highest level of authorization she could clear—at the east area's bridge control kiosk. The light on the kiosk blipped, turned green; the bridge extended, and Grayson edged across it, white-knuckling the handrails. It spanned a seemingly bottomless chasm, and he didn't like that, nor did he like how high up he was, or the way the expansion-grate vibrated with his weight. He kept imagining the thing collapsing, himself falling into the darkness below, forever.

He made it to the other side; breathed a sigh of relief. The east area, like most places in NEST, was built identically to the other wings—glossy medical tile and walls painted in the sort of colors endemic to psych wards and public bathrooms—mostly for navigational convenience. And it was probably cheaper to build that way, Grayson decided. Like how developers built whole communities of mcmansions, because the materials were cheap, and it took less time to build, because there was no creativity, no thought or planning, in the design of a mcmansion; it was the real-life equivalent of copy-and-paste.

A zombie in a blood-spattered lab coat lurched toward him, tried to tear a chunk out of his shoulder with its teeth. But Grayson side-stepped, blew its head into a pink-red mist. Then took stock of his ammunition, which was looking pretty pitiful by now. Just a couple of shells. He'd need to be more conservative.

He turned a corner, right into the muzzle of a gun. Grayson wasn't surprised to see Ada staring down the sights. She looked banged up and dirty, the effect heightened by the harsh fluorescent glow of the lights, and her thigh was bandaged. Her red dress was so grimy that it looked brown. "Thanks to fucking Annette, I probably have hepatitis from falling into that garbage pit," she said. "I know you were with her. Call it a gut-feeling. You weren't where Leon and I left you."

"And you're not FBI."

"What a relief. It was exhausting, keeping all those cover-story details straight." She stared at him, expressionless. "So straight to business. Where's the G-Virus, Harman?"

"Getting tired of limping around, looking for it, Ada?" he asked. "Shouldn't have worn heels. Just saying." He pointed his shotgun at her. "You can pull that trigger, if you want. But you do, you'll get a 12-gauge in the gut. Gut wounds are the worst. Real slow, painful. Bacteria seeps into your body, and you die from a painful— _very painful_ , I gotta emphasize—infection."

She maintained her perfect poker-face. "Sounds bad."

"It is."

"Where's the G-Virus, Harman?" she repeated coolly.

"I don't know."

"Bullshit," Ada said, shoving the gun between his eyes. The muzzle was cold, dug into his skin. "I'm not gonna ask again."

"Then shoot."

Ada stared. The fluorescent lights hummed loudly, filling the silence between them.

"We gonna stand here, or what?"

"What if I told you I knew something about Alexia?" Ada asked suddenly, still wearing her flawless poker-face.

"What's there to know? Alexia's dead."

"What if I told you she wasn't?"

Grayson stared, silent. The lights hummed.

"Seems I've got your attention," Ada said smugly, the ghost of a smirk on her face. "All you have to do is tell me where the G-Virus is, Harman. And I'll tell you everything I know."

"How do I know you're not full of shit?"

"You don't. But something tells me it's a gamble you're willing to make."

Grayson said nothing. Then, "What do you know?"

"You'll tell me the location of the G-Virus first, Harman."

"What happens if I tell you? Who are you gonna sell it to?"

"It goes to the highest bidder. But that's a small price for Alexia, isn't it?"

He thought of Annette, how tirelessly she was working to prevent the G-Virus from leaking into the world. All the sleepless nights, the scuffles with William, the losses she'd endured, and all the sacrifices she'd made to keep their research from falling into the wrong hands. But then he thought about Alexia, about the things he wanted to say to her, and felt ashamed, weak; Ada was right, it was a price he was willing to pay, a gamble he was willing to make. "It's in Annette and William's laboratory, in the West Area," he said, feeling like a snitch. Because that was precisely what he was right now: a snitch.

Ada smiled. "Good boy." She didn't lower her gun. "Alexia," she began, "is in Antarctica. She's been there since 1983. She staged her own death and put herself on ice, or so my contacts say."

His forehead creased. A strange, indescribable emotion coiled in his chest. "Ice?"

"Cryogenics," Ada said.

"That's bullshit. Like Walt Disney? How he's supposedly in deep-freeze?"

"Alexia was Umbrella's brightest scientist, Harman. A real shining fucking star, that one. You really think she couldn't build a cryogenics system? Look at NEST. Umbrella has the technology; Alexia had the brains to use it."

"Is she alive? I thought people only did cryo when they were dead."

"I don't know if she is," Ada said. "But I wouldn't doubt that she is. Umbrella gave her the necessary funding for it, and they wouldn't invest that kind of money if they didn't think it would pay off. She was Spencer's personal Jesus."

"How do you even know about this?"

"It's my job to know things," Ada said. "Maybe I'll go after her, once I'm done in Raccoon. I hear the Hive/Host Capture Force has taken a particular interest in her, and I'm thinking I'd like to beat them to the profit."

"Will you?"

"Honestly?" Ada lowered her gun, and when she was sure he wouldn't shoot her, which he wouldn't, holstered it in the leather shoulder rig she wore. "Probably not. I don't like the cold. And the HCF isn't really an organization I'd like to get on the bad side of, for professional reasons."

"Do you know anything else about Alexia?"

Ada shook her head. "No."

"Do you, uh, know where the cold lab is?"

"I do, actually," Ada said. "One of the places I'd checked for the G-Virus. Down a level. Some zombies down there, so watch your back."

"Thanks." Grayson paused, feeling this weird urge to cry. "And I really mean that. Thank you, Ada."

"Don't thank me, Harman. You don't know if I'm telling the truth." Ada winked, then hobbled down the corridor, her high heels clicking sharply against the pale medical tile.

Then the weird urge to cry went away, and Grayson suddenly felt cold, covered in a kind of filth that could never quite be wiped away. He'd told Ada where to find the G-Virus, all for the price of hearsay.

* * *

"Hearsay that checked out," Alexia told him, eating canned peaches without any enthusiasm. She moved her pawn on the chessboard. "This canned food is dreadful," she remarked, spooning another syrupy lump of peaches into her mouth. "I can't bloody wait to have a proper meal."

Grayson pondered his next move. Decided on his knight, and took one of her bishops. "Same. Haven't eaten actual food since before the attack on Rockfort. Your move." He sipped his lukewarm instant coffee.

"I'm thinking Italy," Alexia said, and moved her rook, taking his knight. "You're still playing very sloppily, Grayson." She looked at him from across the chessboard. "That said, what do you think?"

"Think of what?"

She sighed loudly. "Italy, darling. What do you think about Italy?"

"It's nice."

Alexia planted her forehead on the chessboard and sighed again, louder.

"I'm just fucking with you, Alexia," Grayson sniggered, moving his pawn and taking one of hers. "But why Italy?"

She straightened up in her chair. "Why not?" she said, studying the chessboard. "It's warm, good food. And I've only been there once as a little girl, on a business trip to Milan with father." She moved her knight.

"I vaguely remember that trip," he said. "You sure Italy's okay? You might burn alive, Lex. You're pale as birdshit."

"There's this little invention, Grayson. It's called sunscreen."

"In your case, you actually need a screen. One of those things you put in the window of your car on hot days, so the interior doesn't bake."

She tossed a slimy gob of peach at him, catching his cheek. And giggled. "Shut up. I want to hear more of your story, Grayson."

Grayson smiled, wiped the peach away. "You just told me to shut up," he pointed out, and moved his bishop.

"I want to hear what happened with Ada, the Birkins, that Leon fellow. So get back to it. I'm invested." She took his bishop with her knight, and he took her knight with his rook. "You're slowly improving," she remarked.


	28. Hazardous Materials

Grayson found himself in some sort of lounge area. It was dark—the lights had blown out—and so he navigated the room by the light emanating from a pair of vending machines. It smelled like cleaning products and blood down here, like a freshly sanitized crime scene.

Something brushed his arm, made him jump. Automatically, he swung his shotgun around, and felt dumb; it was just a ubiquitous office fern, and Grayson idly wondered why all office ferns looked the same, and if warehouses sold them wholesale in bulk, and that was why they were in every fucking office ever. "Fucking plant," he muttered.

His foot bumped against something: a body, formerly a woman—he was pretty sure it had once been a woman anyway—but he couldn't be _too_ sure; something had thoroughly mutilated the corpse. The body was crisscrossed with deep gashes, and the head had been torn off; the skin around the severed neck looked like hastily torn gift-wrap, and the white stump of the spine jutted out from it like the bone in a cartoon ham.

And Grayson wondered what sort of fucking thing was running around down here that it could tear someone's head off like that. Was it one of those humanoid things in trench-coats? Maybe that big fucker with the missile launcher? But no S.T.A.R.S down here, so maybe it was the other guy, the bald one Ada had driven the SWAT truck into.

He heard a high-pitched rasp, like cold air scraping through a vent, and something skittering along the walls. And something was skittering along the walls, on all fours, moving at the speed of Spiderman on methamphetamines, a long tongue unspooling from a mouth bristling with sharp, yellowish teeth. Its head looked like a grayish-pink soufflé, or the top of a sickly muffin—like someone had cut off the top of its skull, and the thing's brain had bubbled up from the bowl of it—and it looked kind of human, but had no skin, like someone had flayed its epidermis. No eyes from what Grayson could see, which was good, because it meant the thing couldn't fucking see him and rip off his head. So if he was very, very quiet…

He edged down the hallway, dead center, not daring to get anywhere near the walls. Heard a sickening crunch, and then something drop with a squelch: a woman's half-eaten face stared up at him, and Grayson could still see the vestiges of fear frozen on the woman's gnawed, bloody face. She'd died screaming and wide-eyed.

Grayson almost said _fuck_ , but then remembered there was a fucking long-tongued thing on the ceiling above him, just sitting there, waiting for some dumbass to say _fuck_ , so it could have some dessert.

Its tongue dropped down, dangling like a loose cable.

He started to sweat, watching the grayish tongue waggle in his periphery. His whole body became a knot of tension and pure animal fear, and Grayson found himself holding his breath.

COLD LAB on the door ahead of him, in white stenciled letters. Part of him wanted to run for the door, but he was pretty sure that tongue-creature could outpace him, so Grayson eased his way toward the door…

And walked right into an abandoned custodial cart, rattling its contents.

The thing rasped suddenly, like a sharp intake of air through a grate, and scuttled toward him at a speed that could only be described as not-fucking-possible. Grayson sprinted, the thing right on his heels, vaulting over an overturned trashcan and lunging for the door.

He felt the tips of its massive claws tear into his calves, warm blood gushing down his leg, soaking his pants, pooling in his shoes. The door was automated, the light on it blue to indicate General Staff clearance, and it slid open for him after quick-scanning his ID wristband.

Hobbling, Grayson threw himself through the open door and hit the ground, hard. The door shut behind him, the rubber gaskets sealing, and he heard the tongue-thing's claws glance off the fiberglass, its body thud against the door, a loud, angry shriek.

He breathed, and lay on the cool tile, in the cool darkness.

* * *

"The numpties call them Lickers," Alexia informed him.

"I think I remember that from somewhere." He scratched his head, squinting into the fog of his unimportant memories. "Pretty sure I read it on a note at some point in the RPD, I think."

"If that was the case, you would have known what they were called. Or at least what most people called them." Alexia sipped her second instant coffee, and performed the Albin Countergambit to defend against his clumsy Queen's Gambit. She'd tried explaining to him what the Albin Countergambit was when he'd asked, but had lost him between her exposition of how the move was originally played by some guy named Mattia Cavalotti in the 1883 Milan tournament, and her long-winded, unnecessarily complex explanation of its mechanics.

"I had a lot going on, Lex. Wasn't really worried about what the fuck they were called," Grayson countered, staring at the board and rapping his fingers against its lacquered trim. He was trying to remember the things he'd read in _M_ _asterful Maneuvers: A Guide to Chess Strategy_ , and was drawing a blank. Not a blank, he supposed; the information was hazy. Boring information was always hazy, because he had no reason to want to remember it. "Yeah, I'm not sure what to do now," he grumbled.

"Stop waiting for other people to solve it for you," Alexia said, watching him with her blue eyes, like nuggets of ice.

"I'm just not as into this game as you are, nerd."

"You're stalling."

Grayson sighed, stared at the board. Moved his bishop. "Anyway," he said, "the story."

* * *

He pushed himself off the ground and looked around. Desks with inert computers and lab instruments, and photographs of loved ones who stared out from better days. Chilly light poured through a Lexan window on his left, spilling across the floor, which was painted pale green and white, like a tennis court. Beyond the Lexan, Grayson saw shelves crusted with ice, and some sort of glass-fronted box, like one of those crane machines he'd played as a kid.

Following the L-shaped room, past abandoned work-stations, servers racked in shatterproof display windows with electronic locks, and terminals with blinking lights and error codes, he found a woman slumped against the wall. Grayson poked her with his shotgun. She sagged sideways, and didn't get up.

An automatic door opened for him, and out gusted a cloud of sub-zero air. He shivered and went inside, hands tucked in his armpits. His breath steamed in the air.

How the fuck was he supposed to know which canister contained P-Epsilon? Grayson skimmed the shelves. The labels read like pages out of a technical manual, complete with ambiguous technical manual diagrams which didn't elucidate anything at all, and instead made things more confusing.

It was cold. He shivered violently.

A dead man lay on the ground, a scientist. Grayson toed the corpse; it didn't move, and that was absolutely fine.

He continued looking over the labels of the various things on the shelves, hoping the P-Epsilon was labeled clearly enough, and not written in some alien chemistry language only understood by scientists.

UMB NO. 12, read one of the bottles. UMB NO. 3, UMB NO. 91. And so on.

"What the fuck?" he said, and licked his chapped lips. "What the fuck does any of this shit mean? Which one is fucking P-Epsilon?"

He couldn't take the cold anymore, and hurried out of the cold lab. Grayson rubbed warmth into his arms and hands. His pant-leg stuck to him, the blood a dark jelly now, and he wanted to know how the fuck he was supposed to find this chemical for Annette, or if it was even down here. Then went back in.

Grayson noticed a canister, then, labeled P- ε, below that, UMB NO. 21, and a warning that stated to handle the chemical with care, and to store its contents at no more than -5 Celsius. The letter ε, he remembered reading somewhere, was the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet: epsilon.

"Bingo," he said, and carefully removed the canister from the shelf.

Now he just needed to figure out how to outmaneuver the tongue-thing while carrying a canister of potentially hazardous chemicals.


	29. We'll Be Okay

Grayson flashed his wristband; the gaskets released, and the door slid open with a soft _woosh_ on its induction track. He peered into the semi-darkness beyond the door, searching for the tongue-thing. Though Grayson couldn't see it, he heard it scrabbling along the walls just around the corner from the door—and then it was thumping around the vents behind the walls, in the ceiling.

And a horrifying realization dawned on him: there were two of the fuckers, maybe three. His face was slick with sweat, despite the temperature of the hallway being a few ticks above forty degrees, and he edged out into the darkness, licking his lips, the canister of P-Epsilon tucked under his arm.

Sidling along the wall, Grayson peeked around the corner, saw one of the tongue-things in the glow of the vending machine. It sat on the wall like some kind of mutant tree-frog, occasionally unspooling its long tongue and tasting the recycled air. Another was stuck to the ceiling, munching noisily on the sticky remains of a man in a lab coat. The third was still banging around the vents.

 _Fuck_ , he mouthed to himself, searching for another way around. A sign on the wall indicated a stairwell ahead. But there was a vent on the wall too, and he'd have to walk past it to reach the stairwell.

But chancing one of the tongue-things was better than chancing two, Grayson reasoned, so he swallowed the lump of fear in his throat and tip-toed in the direction of the stairwell. The thing kept bumping around the vents behind the wall, and he kept looking at the grate, expecting it to bang open, and the monster to come skittering into the corridor. And then he knocked over another fucking office fern, and the ceramic pot shattered, and the thing came.

The grate banged open and flew into the wall, crumpling like cheap aluminum, the tongue-thing shooting out into the corridor like a careening drag-car. Grayson froze, forgetting how to run, and he wondered if this was how deer felt when pinned in the headlights of an oncoming car.

It licked the air and skittered across the tile on all fours, coming closer and closer. It was looking for him. Weird noises bubbled up from its throat, and it rasped and snapped its jaws, and click-clacked its claws on the tile in a way evocative of old typewriters. But it didn't know he was there, not for sure.

Grayson stooped, moving real slow and careful, and scooped up an oblong shard of pottery. Then slung it, hard as he could, and hit one of the vending machines. The tongue-thing shrieked, whipped around and charged in the direction of the noise, and Grayson quickly opened the door to the stairwell and ran like someone had lit a fire under his ass, slip-sliding on a mulch of print-outs, folders, and rolls of bubble-wrap.

He ducked past a zombie and bolted up the stairwell. And side-stepped another, shoving it over the railing, and another, which he pushed down the steps.

Grayson shouldered through a door, cutting across an empty executive waiting room, and kept running through a maze of fluorescent corridors, eventually finding himself, somehow, in the main shaft.

He saw someone running along the bridge toward him, a girl he didn't recognize. Grayson quickly hid himself. Brownish-red hair, blue eyes, a black tank-top and jeans. She couldn't have been older than nineteen, maybe twenty, and she looked like a woman on a mission, but definitely no professional. So he was pretty sure she wasn't with Ada. Not like Ada would entrust some super-secret biological weapon to some collegiate chick in biker jeans anyway.

"Shit," the woman said, and shook her head, wiping her face, only managing to smear the grime. "Hold on, Sherry. Just a little longer." She smelled like a sewer, and looked like she'd crawled out of one, and took a few minutes to catch her breath. Then the woman straightened up, a look of determination on her face, and went through the automated door, into the East Area.

After he was sure she'd gone, Grayson stepped out of his hiding spot and continued toward the West Area, where Annette was.

When he arrived at the lab, smelling of decontam, Grayson said, "I think I saw the girl who's with Sherry," and set the canister of P-Epsilon on Annette's workspace. "Here's your chemical. Now tell me what's wrong with Sherry. And maybe answer a couple of other questions."

Annette swiveled in her stool, graphs, numbers, and other data winking on her computer monitor. A picture of the Birkins stared at him from the desk, William's dead eyes and dead expression starkly contrasting the bright smile of Sherry, and Annette's proud half-smile. She must have noticed him looking at the picture, and said, "One of those obligatory department store family photos." She smiled awkwardly, twisting her wedding ring. "I talked William into it. I wanted a picture of our family. He wasn't happy that I'd torn him away from his work, so he didn't smile." Annette paused. "He rarely ever smiled. Honestly, I can't even remember the last time he did."

"What's wrong with Sherry, Annette?"

Silence.

"Annette."

"She's… she's been implanted." Annette didn't meet his eyes. She stared at her wedding band instead, as if it was the most interesting thing in the room. "With a G-embryo."

Grayson said nothing. An intense guilt washed over him, then, like an icy wave. He'd told Ada where to find the G-Virus; maybe he was responsible for Sherry's condition. "Is she going to survive?"

"I made a vaccine," Annette said, looking at him. "She'll be okay. But I need to finish this weapon, or there's no stopping William."

"Your daughter's infected with a fucking parasite, and you're worried about this goddamn weapon?"

"The weapon is necessary, Grayson."

"Fuck William," he shouted, and swiped a stack of papers from her workspace. Print-outs cartwheeled in the air, tumbling gracefully to the tiled floor. "Sherry's the fucking priority! You think that scrawny fucking college kid is gonna save her, Annette?" His anger and frustrations erupted like a volcano, pouring forth like lava and scalding clouds of smoke. "A fucking college kid?" he yelled, hurling a beaker into the wall, the glass popping on impact. Annette didn't flinch, watching his outburst with the patience of someone who'd seen much worse. "Sherry is fucking dying, and you think some bitch who probably can't even complete her term paper is gonna save her?"

"Sherry's in good hands, Grayson."

Then the rage, rather than mounting, went from him like air from a popped balloon, and he started to cry. Annette hugged him and said nothing, because she knew nothing needed to be said, and Grayson appreciated that, her intuition.

Several minutes passed, and once he was able to pull himself together again, Annette said, "Sherry is gonna be fine, Grayson. I promise." Annette turned his head toward her and smiled, their eyes meeting. "We're gonna get out of this. I'm gonna get that university job. And we're gonna fight Umbrella, all the way to the fucking Supreme Court."

"They're not gonna like that." He smiled, despite himself.

"I'll be harder to track down under the name Annette Harman."

"It's not that easy."

She laughed. "I know." Then her mood sobered, and Annette said, "We're gonna need to do a lot. Change our names, possibly. Relocate. That's if we want to go quietly." She looked at him.

"We're not gonna go quietly," Grayson said, and shook his head. "Umbrella's gotta answer for the shit that went down here." He paused. "Alfred won't be happy."

"Alfred isn't your problem anymore," Annette said. "He's Umbrella, Grayson. As far as I'm concerned, he's just as responsible for what happened in Raccoon."

"I ran into Ada," Grayson said, staring into the middle-distance and trying not to think about Alfred, and what would happen to him if things reached the courts.

"No surprise," Annette said, unsurprised. "She wants the G-Virus."

"She said Alexia's still alive. In Antarctica."

"It's bullshit, Grayson," Annette said automatically. "Alexia's dead. Ada wanted information, and she'd tell you anything to get it."

"Maybe you're right," Grayson said, feeling stupid. "The whole story she spun was whacked out. Cryogenics. Umbrella funding it all. Alexia died in a freak accident, and Ada played me like a fucking fiddle."

Annette's mouth became a thin, hard line, and she stared, hard, at him. "What do you mean?"

"I told Ada about the G-Virus," he confessed.

Annette looked profoundly disappointed in him. She sighed, moved away from him and rubbed her chin. Then raked her fingers through her sandy-blonde hair and crossed the laboratory, rifling through several papers, not because she was interested in actually sorting them, but because she needed to do something with her hands that didn't involve his face. She stopped messing with the papers, and said, "What's done is done. She would've found out eventually. And she's not here in the laboratory yet, so that's good. We can still salvage the situation."

"I was stupid," he said, and meant it. "I fell for some bullshit story straight outta some B-movie."

"You are stupid for believing it, but I don't blame you," Annette said, and looked at him. "You want closure. I get it, Grayson. And after seeing NEST, I don't blame you for buying some tabloid-grade story about cryogenics." She walked back to her desk and the canister of P-Epsilon, and sat down on the upholstered stool. "It's true Umbrella's experimented with cryogenics to varying degrees of success, mostly in the way of storing BOWs and viral samples for transport. But as far as I know, nothing about storing humans—not alive, at least."

"Ada said she'd built it herself, the cryogenics system."

"With early 1980s technology? Alexia was a genius, yes, but not a miracle-worker, Grayson. I'd say she was a kid, too, but that would be patronizing. She accomplished more in thirteen years than most people do in a lifetime."

He nodded.

"Pretty soon we'll be far away from Raccoon City and Umbrella," Annette said, watching him from her workspace. "We'll be able to start over, Grayson. Wipe the slate clean. The three of us."

He nodded again.

"I'm looking forward to it," Annette said, and smiled.

"Until we're testifying against Umbrella, and our lives become very complicated." He frowned, running a hand through his dark hair. "Maybe we wind up on Rockfort, in the prison."

"We have to do it, Grayson. We can't run away," Annette said. "We won't go to Rockfort, I promise."

"You've never seen the lengths Alfred will go to, to put his enemies in their place."

"We'll be okay," Annette assured him. "The three of us."


	30. We Can't Let Him Get Away!

Annette separated liquids into beakers, put them through the centrifuge, extracted something from that and added it to something else. It, as far as Grayson was concerned, was magic. He thought about the alchemists of antiquity, sweating over their alembics, trying to find the thing that was the Philosophers Stone.

He read a crumbling paperback of _The Shining_ , the stamp declaring it as property of the Raccoon Public Library still inside its cover. “Whose books?” he asked, kicking his feet up on William’s desk.

“Ours,” Annette said, turning the knobs on her microscrope and squinting at something in the lens. “We bought a box of books at a library book sale. Mostly for Sherry. We wanted her to read more.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Not great,” Annette said. “She likes _The Chronicles of Narnia_ , and _The Outsiders_. Things like that. I brought those books down here with the intention of reading them to pass the time, but never got around to it.”

Grayson nodded. He was trying to read, but it was as if words weren’t on the page at all, a _lorem ipsum_ of figments. He imagined the words as tiny bubbles, then, floating away from him, their meaning far beyond the stretch of his arms, his grasp. “I like beat poetry,” he remarked.

“Beat poetry is purple-prose by drug addicts,” Annette said, still turning the knobs, still squinting at the thing in the lens.

“Alexia said something like that. She called it ‘word-soup’.”

“She wasn’t wrong.” Annette squeezed something out of a pipette, into a narrow glass tube, then unwrapped something from a packet of sterile plastic, and measured it out on a watch glass. “What sort of things did Alexia read?” she asked, conversationally.

“She loved her academic books. And when she wasn’t reading academic books, she was reading depressing Russian literature. Tolstoy, Chekhov, Goncharov. Stuff like that.”

“Not even surprised,” Annette said.

“She liked Tolkien.” He shut his mouth, swore he heard something knocking around inside the walls. Grayson put his book down and stared at the vents, slowly reaching for his shotgun. Was it another tongue-thing?

But nothing happened, and the sound, though Grayson couldn’t be sure he’d actually heard anything at all, went away, and he wrote it off as bad nerves.

An hour or so passed, uneventfully.

The pieces of a modified flare-gun molded from blue plastic lay on Annette’s desk like the pieces of a child’s toy, and she started assembling the components. “I think I got it,” she said, and slotted a cartridge in the gun’s fat snub-nosed barrel. “Let’s hope it works as intended.”

“It better. It’s all we got. You sure Sherry’s gonna be okay?”

“Once William’s out of the way, we’ll go to her. She’s in the security room, in the north visitor’s lobby.”

Grayson stood up, and he walked over to Annette and kissed her. “Guess we should find William, and get it over with it.”

She turned to a laptop cased in heavy plastic. The screen displayed a crude wire-frame map of NEST, like those old vector arcade games from when he was a kid, and it looked like a giant hive. “Shit,” she said, and pointed at the screen, at a section in the East Area. “See this dot.” Grayson told her that he did. “That was the bug I put on William. It’s not moving.”

“That’s… not good.”

Annette used the touch-pad to scroll through security feeds of hallways brimming with zombies, hallways that were empty, labs where everything had been destroyed, and labs where everything was intact. “Nothing. I don’t see him.” She minimized that window, and brought up the map again. The dot didn’t move, the cursor burning a steady red, like the light atop the Raccoon City Radio tower. “Shit, this is not fucking good,” she muttered. “I can’t track him without that bug.”

“Something tells me we won’t need to track Bill. He’ll find us,” Grayson said, and moved away from Annette and the computer.

“Or—” Annette stood up and grabbed the little flare-gun—“Sherry. We should go to Sherry.”

He heard the doors to the laboratory open. “Cover me,” Grayson told her. “And stay hidden.”

Annette nodded.

Grayson went to see who—or what—it was, and saw Leon limping toward the cooler, where Annette kept the remaining sample of the G-Virus. “Leon,” Grayson said, and stepped into the open. “Don’t touch that.”

Startled, Leon whipped around, his gun in one hand, pointed at Grayson, and the G-sample in his other hand. Leon looked like something a dog had chewed and spat out. The bandage around his shoulder was stained a rust-colored red. “Harman?” Leon said, and lowered his gun, licking his scabbed lips. “Harman, you’re still alive? What the fuck are you doing in here? Where’s Annette?”

“I don’t know where Annette is,” he lied. Grayson gestured at the sample with his shotgun. “You need to put that back, Leon.” Grayson slowly moved toward him. “Gimme the sample, boot.”

“No way. It’s going to the FBI.”

“Boot, there’s no FBI.”

“Yes, there is. Who’s side are you on, Harman? You’re a cop. You should be helping me.”

“I’m not on anyone’s side.”

Leon frowned. His cheeks were smudged with dirt. “You weren’t where Ada and I left you. I couldn’t get through to you on the radio. What’s going on, Harman?” The rookie had this look on his face which suggested he wasn’t in any mood to hear anything but the honest-to-God truth. “Did Annette convince you to help her? Harman, she shot me. She shot a cop. You should have my goddamn back.”

“That bullet was meant for Ada.”

“Ada? She’s trying to help. She’s gonna expose Umbrella.”

“Ada’s not gonna do anything except take the virus, and leave you out to dry, Kennedy.” He held out his hand. “Give me the sample, boot. It can’t leave the lab. It needs to be destroyed.”

Leon pointed his gun at Grayson and backed away, toward the door, and the things that looked like glowing warheads. “I can’t believe you,” the rookie said, and he sounded genuinely disappointed. “You’re a cop, Harman. A fucking cop. And you’re helping Umbrella?” The door whirred open, automatically, when Leon triggered the motion sensors, and decontam was priming. “I thought you’d have my back. Annette Birkin killed thousands of innocent people, Harman. Those zombies? It’s her fault.”

“It’s not her fault,” Grayson countered.

“Bullshit. This is what Lieutenant Branagh died for? What Clancy died for?”

“How do you know them?”

“Does it matter?” Leon said, and fired a warning shot, and hit one of the tanks. The glass was laminated; it spider-webbed, but did not shatter. The thing inside the tank bobbed, but didn’t seem to be alive. “That’s a warning shot, Harman. Try to take this sample from me, I won’t miss the next time. Good men died protecting this city, and you’re here helping Umbrella, shitting all over their sacrifice.”

“What happened in Raccoon City wasn’t Annette’s fault.”

But Leon was gone.

Grayson heard a loud crash, then, and a deep, guttural roar. Annette rushed past him, through decontam, and she was gone too. “Annette!” Grayson yelled, and ran after her.

The room outside the laboratory was a sort of antechamber. A bridge spanned the antechamber, and below it were several bioreactors. William had crashed through the ceiling, and had nearly killed Leon; but Annette, after declaring William was hers, shot one P-Epsilon cartridge at G, loaded another, shot again, and then a third, final time.

The acid seemed to work; William slowed, then sagged heavily to the ground and did not get up, raw-pink skin bubbling, sloughing off in gelatinous gobbets, revealing a mutant reticulum of bones underneath.

Leon panted and sweated, and pointed his gun at William, standing well away from the body. When he was sure G wouldn’t get up, he lowered his gun and sighed with relief. Then he moved closer, crouching beside G, looking at it like a hunter evaluating a deer carcass.

He looked up at Annette. “You called this thing ‘William’,” he said to her. “Why?”

Annette licked her lips and said, “It shouldn’t have been like this. It’s Umbrella’s fault—this whole mess.”

“You’re Umbrella, too,” Leon said, reasonably. “You’re telling me you weren’t involved in this?” He sniffed and wiped his cheek on the back of his hand, smearing the dirt even more.

“Yes.” And then Annette shouted, “But we never meant for this to happen!”

“Then tell me everything,” Leon said, and stood up, walking over to Annette and staring at her. “Right from the start.”

Annette told him everything—about the USS, about William and Umbrella, and how Grayson fit into everything, and why he was helping her—and when she was finished, silence hung in the air.

“So you made this monster?” Leon asked, and pointed at G.

“We made the G-Virus, but we never intended this to—”

Leon cut her off. “You can spin it any way you want. You’re still responsible.”

Before Grayson even realized what was happening, G moved, wrapped its enormous claw around Annette, and squeezed, and he heard every bone in her torso give way with a loud crunch.

Then G flung Annette into the wall like a doll, and she slid down it, trailing blood. And somehow, she was still breathing.

“Annette!” Grayson screamed, so loudly that the sound scraped his throat, and he hurried to her. Blood soaked her lab coat, and he could see the tips of her ribs protruding from her skin.

“Help me up,” she murmured. Blood pooled in the corners of her mouth, in the cracks between her teeth.

“You need to stay right there,” he said. “What do you need?”

“I need you to help me up,” she said, and coughed spasmodically, spattering his face with blood, her chin. Her lips were so red that it almost looked as if she was wearing lipstick.

Grayson didn’t want to move her, but he did. She stumbled to a control panel and slapped the button with her palm, and the lights in the antechamber flashed red, an alarm yowled, and the bridge, where Leon and G were fighting, began to lower with a pneumatic hiss.

“What’re you doing?” Leon shouted to Annette.

“We can’t let him get away!”


	31. It Helps Me Work Through Things

“You have to hold on, Annette.”

“We need to get to Sherry,” Annette said, wincing. Slowly, she reached into the sticky pocket of her lab coat and came up with a plastic syrette. 400 miligrams of potent, experimental opioid flowed into her bloodstream, and her eyes glazed, and she gazed at the ceiling like a dopefiend after shooting up. “You,” she said lazily, and with difficulty, “need to get me there. I have the vaccine for her. In my other pocket.”

“If you move, you’re gonna make your injuries worse.” Though Grayson couldn’t imagine her injuries getting any worse than this. Every bone in her torso was broken, and she was bleeding internally, he knew, and it was only a matter of time.

Below, the fight between G and Leon went on, and things exploded and shattered, and Leon shot G and seemed no closer to killing it.

Annette was barely hanging on. “I’m tired, Grayson,” she murmured.

“Don’t close your eyes. Just hang on.”

“If—”

“I said don’t close your eyes. Hang on,” Grayson told her. “Sherry needs you, Annette. I need you. We’ll go see her, and we’ll get you help.”

But the rational part of his brain nagged at him, said Annette wouldn’t last much longer, and the emotional part—the part which almost always overwhelmed his rationale in its intensity—argued there was still a chance, that Annette could survive if they moved fast enough. Umbrella had brought people back from death; they could certainly save Annette from the brink of it.

The fight, in the makeshift arena below, hit its crescendo, and G roared, in real pain, and something exploded, and he smelled burnt meat, something under that that might have been chemical—maybe one of the bioreactors. And Leon came up the maintenance lift, creaking on its struts, and he was covered in slimy pieces of G, and the filth from his slog through the sewers.

“Jesus, that looks bad,” he said to Annette. Leon kneeled beside her and checked her wounds, and his face said: _this_ _really_ _is_ _some bad shit_.

“Feels worse, believe me,” Annette said, grimacing. She squeezed her eyes shut and hissed through her teeth, and shifted, trying and failing to find some sort of relief from the pain.

“Look, about what you said… I don’t know how much I believe it, but I’m willing to—”

Annette, wincing,her eyes glazed with pain and opioids, grabbed Leon’s arm and said, “Just tell me you’ll destroy that G sample.”

“No. It’s evidence. It’s going to the FBI.”

“There’s no FBI, boot.”

Annette told Leon about Ada, and Leon, predictably, was unconvinced.

* * *

“He’s an idiot,” Alexia said, encyclopedic, like someone reciting a well-known fact. She leafed through the brittle, yellowing pages of a book on myrmecology, one long, white leg draped over the other. “Wong’s a mercenary. She told Leon where to find the G-Virus, I’m sure.” She glanced up at him. “Why do your dirty work, when someone else is so eager to do it for you?”

They’d taken a break from chess, and were sitting in a room that served as a sort of study. Grayson had buried himself in a flaking paperback titled _The King’s Game: S_ _trategy and Diligence_ _,_ which had, the inside of the book-cover said, originally been written in 1922, but this particular copy was a reprint from 1966. He was reading the chapter on _The Bishop’s Opening_ , puzzling out the weird chess parlance, and the diagrams. He would have asked Alexia, but her explanations were equally as loaded and lengthy as the explanations written on the page, and so it would have been pointless.

“Are you really so determined to beat me, Grayson?” she asked, and smiled like she was trying to sell him a used car.

“I made a promise to myself,” he said.

Alexia turned a page in her myrmecology book, and said, “Did you know some species of ants can clone themselves?”

Grayson looked up from his book and stared at her. “I don’t care about your bug shit, Alexia.”

“You know,” she said, and turned another page, “I don’t think Wong got very far with the G-Virus. Umbrella wanted it. The USS would have hounded her.”

“She didn’t get far. Annette shot her, in the main shaft.”

Alexia blinked.

“She shot her,” he repeated, unsure if she’d heard him or not.

“Yes, yes. I got that. But Annette? Annette Birkin shot someone?” She tossed her white-gold hair over her shoulder. “I once saw her agonize over the death of a laboratory rat.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really? Annette didn’t like animals.”

“Maybe she was traumatized by her dead rat,” Alexia remarked, reading her book. “She’d named it, you know. Snowdrop. She called it Snowdrop.”

“Snowdrop? You’re fucking with me.”

She shrugged.

“Maybe Annette just didn’t like animals because she’d grown up on a ranch. I’d have gotten tired of them, too. Imagine smelling all that cow-shit every day.”

“What happened to Kennedy? After this whole ‘shooting Ada’ thing?”

“I dunno,” Grayson said. “I was too busy getting Annette to Sherry. Ada wasn’t dead, though. I’ll get to that.”

* * *

Annette had shot Ada. Grayson had watched her fall down into the pit of the main shaft, down into the bottomless darkness, and the G-Virus had gone with her. Annette had collapsed from her wounds, and then NEST had started to collapse, an approximation of a woman’s voice warning all personnel to evacuate. So Grayson, despite knowing it was probably a bad idea, helped Annette up and half carried, half walked her to the North Area, where Sherry was supposed to be.

A few zombies shambled in the hallway, oblivious to the fact that the laboratory was coming down around them, and they stretched their rotting arms and careened toward them; but Grayson was quicker, and easily slipped around and past the infected, and cut right, down another hallway.

“Grayson,” Annette said, and lifted her head. Nudging him away, she leaned heavily on the wall, and her breathing was laborious and shallow, and she was sweating and bleeding, and doubling over, her features drawn tight with pain. “I’m not gonna make it. You need to get out. The cable-car isn’t far from here.”

“We came this far,” Grayson told her. “I’m not leaving.”

“Grayson. I’m dying. You know it, and I know it.” Annette stared at him, and her eyes were pink and wet with tears and pain. “I need you to get out,” she pleaded. “While you can. The self-destruct sequence, someone’s activated it. If you don’t get out now, you’re gonna die, too.”

“Then we go out together,” he said.

“I have to help Sherry. You’ve done enough, Grayson. She’ll be safer with Claire.” She straightened up, or tried to, and something loudly cracked. Annette yowled, doubled over again, dripping blood onto the tile. “Your condition makes you a target for Umbrella,” she wheezed. “Sherry’s been through enough, Grayson. She won’t be safe with you.”

“Annette...” Hot tears blurred his vision. “I can’t leave. Not like this.”

Annette pulled her gun, the one she’d taken from the USS, and pointed it at his head. “I won’t ask you again, Grayson.” Her hand shook, and her finger shied on the trigger. “Go. Please. If you love me. If you love Sherry, please, go.”

Grayson stared at the gun, feeling numb all over.

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out like we wanted it to, Grayson,” Annette said, and she lowered the gun and kissed him, and it felt as if she’d used all her strength to perform such a small thing. "I love you."

Her lips tasted metallic, and the blood cooled on his lips.

“I wanted that university job,” Annette said, and stroked his cheek.

* * *

Grayson found himself staring at the words in _The King’s Game: Strategy and Diligence_ as if it was some alien language, and he became aware of the tears stinging his eyes. He quickly wiped them away and put the book down.

Alexia watched him like a cat.

“Sorry,” he said, and cleared his throat, straightening up in his chair.

“You did love her,” Alexia said, and she sounded angry.

“Don’t start this shit with me again, Alexia.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I supposed to take that graciously, Grayson? That you loved her?”

Grayson picked up his book and pretended to read, mostly to avoid the conversation, and the inevitable confrontation which would accompany it.

“Ignoring the elephant in the room doesn’t change the fact that there’s a bloody fucking elephant in the room, Grayson.”

“All right. So we’re doing this again,” he said, and looked at her. “Fine. You were dead, Alexia. Or I thought you were dead. You can’t be pissed about this. You’ve got no goddamn right.”

She pursed her lips. The magnified red ant on the cover of her book, titled _A Study of Myrmecology,_ seemed to be judging him with its beady eyes. “Apologies if I take issue with you falling for some other woman, Grayson. I didn’t realize I no longer mattered.”

“Jesus Christ, you’re still the same self-centered, egotistical brat you were fifteen years ago,” Grayson shot back, putting his book down and resting his hands on it. “You’re twenty-seven-years-old. Fucking act like it.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me like that, Grayson.”

“Or what? Gonna hit me with your tentacle again? Lob a fireball at me?” Grayson sighed. “Sorry,” he said, and meant it. “It’s… a lot has happened in the last couple of months. I’m overwhelmed. I guess that’s why I’m even telling you this story. It’s cathartic. It helps me work through things.”


	32. These Mean Streets

Grayson thought about staying. He thought about putting his shotgun down and waiting for the zombies to come, or for a piece of the laboratory to crush him. He no longer wanted to survive; Annette and Sherry had been his impetus, his incentive to overcome the odds, and now Annette was dead, and Sherry had gone away with a stranger. Sitting there and waiting for death seemed like the best thing to do, and so he did.

He found a bench, and he sat down on it. The alarm blared, threw flashing red lights, and the approximation of a woman’s voice announced that there was less than fifteen minutes before NEST was destroyed. Grayson stared at the shotgun across his lap. Maybe he could just put it in his mouth, like they did in the movies, and pull the trigger… It was better than zombies, but weren’t explosions supposed to be painless and quick?

“Harman?”

“Ada,” Grayson said, running his fingers along the length of the shotgun. “The falling-off-a-cliff trope is one they use in a lot of movies. An effective cliffhanger that leaves the audience wanting more, and it leaves things open-ended, in case the suits want to churn out a few shitty sequels.” He looked at her. “How’d you do it?”

“I have my ways,” she said, and limped over to him. She looked pretty bad. Dirtier than before, and, inexplicably, wet. “Look, this place is coming down.”

“I don’t care anymore.”

“You came this far, and you’re just gonna sit there and die?”

“Annette’s dead. Sherry’s gone.”

“What about Alexia?”

Grayson scowled. “It’s bullshit. You’re a fucking liar.” He looked past her, at a poster advertising Umbrella’s benefits ( _Contact H_ _uman Resources_ _to enroll in our new employee benefits package_ was printed beneath a smiling stock-photo woman). “You wanted the G-Virus, so you told me what I wanted to hear to make that happen.”

“I told you what I knew,” Ada said. “Admittedly, it’s a rumor. But that’s something worth living for, right? Something worthy of pursuit?” She paused. “What if it’s the truth?”

“Cryogenics is quack science. Annette told me that once.”

“Yet look around you, Grayson. We’re in the fucking middle of science fiction.”

His attention shifted from the benefits poster, to a laminate sheet tacked beside it reminding all employees to follow proper safety protocol. He didn’t want to look at Ada. “Just go, Ada. I don’t care what you do anymore.”

“Sherry’s still out there. She’ll need someone familiar.”

“She’s got that girl. Claire.”

“Just like that?” Ada frowned. “Just like that, you’re gonna let Sherry go?”

Grayson thought about that, then shook his head.

He found himself following Ada to the cable-car,feeling a strange sense of guilt, of renewed purpose and self-preservation. When they boarded, and they took out the infected USS guy inside, Ada pulled the lever on the dashboard, and the auto-pilot triggered, and the car rumbled up the tunnel, with five minutes to spare until detonation.

Grayson sat down on a bench padded with thin cushions of foam, which did little in the way of comfort, and he stared at the dead USS guy and wondered if he’d been one of the guys who’d killed William. He felt kind of bad for the guy; he’d made it to the shuttle, only to die from the infection.

“You ever retrieve the G-Virus?” Grayson asked. The car hummed along its cables, filling the cabin with an electronic susurrus.

“No,” she said. “Right now, I just want to get out in one fucking piece.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe you,” he said.

“Doesn’t matter if you don’t.”

A few moments of uncomfortable silence passed.

“So,” he said, and gave her a sidelong look, “why save me?”

“You hoping for some kind of confession?” She smirked, watching him in her periphery. “Something like, ‘I saved you because I fell for you’, like in the movies? Hate to break it to you, but it’s nothing like that. You suck completely and utterly and profoundly with women, Harman. You’re too indecisive. If Alexia really is alive, I feel sorry for her.” Her smirk widened, showing a sliver of white teeth. “I like them simple, naive, and sensitive. Kennedy is more my type.”

“Alexia liked control,” Grayson said conversationally. Then, “You taking me to your employers? Because of my ‘condition’?”

“No.”

“So why save me?”

Ada shrugged, fingering a tear in her dark stockings. The flesh showing through was bruised, purpling. “I told you back in that apartment that I’d help Sherry.”She looked out the window, at the lights on the walls of the tunnel, and then she looked at him. “Think we’re almost there. And Grayson? I’m sorry about Annette.”

Grayson nodded. “So am I.”

“You loved her a lot, didn’t you?”

“I did. And I don’t know how I’ll carry on without her.”

The cable-car stopped, and Grayson found himself in the sewers again. He followed Ada through the tunnels, and eventually they found themselves in the Raccoon City Police Department, emerging from the tunnel beneath the goddess statue. The lobby was eerily silent, like a tomb, or a breath held in fear.

Marvin still lay on the ground, his corpse stiff and almost unreal, like a movie prop someone had forgotten to put away. Grayson still hadn’t forgotten about the picture of his daughter Keira; once he was out of Raccoon City, he’d mail the picture to her or her mother, or perhaps deliver it in person. It gave him something to think about, to distract him from the reality that Annette was dead, and that Sherry was likely far away, beyond his reach, with a college student Grayson didn’t know or could even say he trusted, even if Annette had trusted her and would have wanted him to trust her, too.

“This is where we part ways,” Ada told him. "And to answer your question? About how you'll carry on without her? You just will."

“Thanks, Ada.”

“I’ll bill you later,” she joked, and then she was gone.

Alone, Grayson went on, and emerged in heavy rain, finding himself on the streets of Raccoon City again, under the glow of neon advertising dead businesses, and billboards advertising Umbrella’s lies. Flyers and newspapers crunched under his shoes. Zombies wailed and shuffled under the streetlights.

He was walking down Fisson Street when his radio suddenly crackled, and Carlos’s voice fuzzed over the wave. “Anyone out there?” he asked. “My name is Carlos Oliveira, and I’ve got an injured woman with me who needs urgent medical attention. I know where to get it, but I need help. If anyone can hear me, respond. Please.”

Grayson pressed the button on his radio. “Carlos?” he said. “This is Grayson Harman. I can hear you. Can you hear me?”

“Harman? Holy shit, we thought you were dead. It’s Jill, man. She’s been infected with the T-Virus.”

“What?” Grayson’s chest tightened; it felt like someone was squeezing his heart in their fist. Then a sense of guilt washed over him, intense and sudden, and slowly sublimated into resolve, a need to make things right. “I’ll come,” he said. “Where are you, Oliveira, and what do you need?”

“We’re at St. Michael’s Clocktower,” Carlos said. “Was supposed to evac, but that fucking S.T.A.R.S monster shot our chopper down. Then Jill got sick, and we’ve been stuck here. I need to get to Raccoon General. I remember something about a vaccine being worked on there, when shit started hitting the fan and people were getting sick. But it was never finished, far as I know. Figured I could give it a crack. It’s better than sitting on my ass and waiting for Jill to die.”

“Do you have that kind of knowledge?” Grayson asked. “To make a vaccine, I mean.”

“Yeah, sort of,” Carlos said. “It’s our best shot. You gotta help me, Harman. You’re the first person to fucking respond to me.”

“What happened to Nikolai and Mikhail?”

“Mikhail’s dead, and Nikolai’s gone.”

“I’ll be there as soon as possible,” Grayson said. “Just keep Jill alive, Oliveira.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Carlos said, and he cut the line.

Grayson ran, and as long as he kept running and took all the shortcuts he knew,he could reach St. Michael’s in less than an hour.

The cable-car had smashed through the wall around St. Michael’s, and looked like a piece of origami worked in dense 1960s steel. Some component groaned and shifted within its frame, settling, and the air stank of gasoline and smoke. Shards of shattered glass glittered like diamonds in the grass. A scree of bricks lay across the courtyard.

“I’m here, Oliveira,” he radioed, and waited for a reply.

“Opened the door,” Carlos replied. “Hurry up inside, Harman.”

Grayson went inside, and it occurred to him that this was the first time he’d ever set foot in St. Michael’s. The lobby glittered like something out of a 1920s movie palace, and it smelled of dried flowers and varnish. Carlos was waiting for him, and he looked like he wanted badly to sleep.

“You look like absolute shit,” Carlos remarked. “And you fucking stink like shit, too. Where the fuck were you?”

“It’s a long story,” Grayson said.

“Yeah, well, we don’t got time for long stories. Some other time, maybe.”

“How’s Jill?”

“Out cold,” Carlos said, frowning. “She’s been like that for a while. Some kinda coma, I think. Not responsive, but she’s gotta pulse, so that’s good.” He gestured to a door across the room. “She’s in the chapel.”

“They do weddings here,” Grayson remarked absently.

Carlos gave him an odd look.

“That’s why they have a chapel in a clocktower,” Grayson said, and shook his head. He rubbed his face. “Sorry,” he added quickly. “I’ve been through a lot, and I’m tired. Let’s get to the hospital.”

“I’d say you should get some rest, but Jill’s not gonna get any better,” Carlos said. “So let’s go.”

They went. They were crossing the courtyard when Grayson asked, “Where’s the S.T.A.R.S monster?”

“Dunno,” Carlos said, walking ahead of him. Grayson stared at the UBCS emblem on the back of his tactical vest—the Umbrella logo with two crossed swords and a shield inside it—and thought about Annette, because anything even tangentially related to Umbrella made him think of Annette, and maybe that was his way of grieving, to self-flagellate. “Jill and I kicked its ass, and it went somewhere, probably to lick its wounds. But it’ll be back. Jill’s not dead yet. Got her buddy Brad, though.”

“He was an asshole,” Grayson said matter-of-factly.

“Jill thinks so, too. But she still felt bad about it.”

“Oliveira, you ever lose anyone?” he asked suddenly.

Carlos looked over his shoulder. “Lost my team,” he said. “Some of them were friends.”

“How about loved ones? Like girlfriends, or family?”

“Sure,” Carlos said.

“How’d you work through it?”

“You okay, Harman? Jill’s not dead, man. Relax. She’ll be fucking pissed at you, though, when she wakes up. So good luck, amigo. Women, man. They can be mean.”

“I deserve it.”

“Yeah, you do,” Carlos agreed. “You left Jill without saying anything. Just up and abandoned her. I’d be pissed too, if I was her.” He shrugged. “But me? I’m sure you had your reasons to leave, Harman. You’ve clearly been through some shit.”

“Yeah,” he said.


	33. The Vaccine

Raccoon General looked as if it had been besieged by chainsaws. Pieces of people lay around the lobby, and the walls looked like a Pollock painting done in shades of red.

Zombies fed on the dead like buzzards, rending and tearing gobbets of rotten meat from the corpses, and they were so preoccupied by feeding that they didn’t even notice Carlos put his gun to their heads and shoot.

Two dead green things lay among the bodies, in front of the reception office, and they looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a gorilla, something that might have existed in some weird transitional post-Mesozoic period. “Barely managed to kill those fuckers,” Carlos told him. “Almost took my head off, man. I wasn’t gonna fuck around in here without back-up. Could be more of those things.”

“So I’m your meat-shield,” Grayson said dryly.

“Consider it recompense for being an asshole to Jill,” Carlos said cheerily.

They cut through reception. More bodies in here, most of them mutilated beyond recognition of even their sex. Carlos went through a door, Grayson behind him, and they were in some kind of room that seemed to serve as both break-room and office, and he decided it was probably where the doctors came between calls to cat-nap, to research, or to have coffee.

Someone’s half-eaten Chinese takeout was spread out over one of the desks in the middle of the room (there were three desks pushed together), and a greenish-blue mold was growing inside a greasy carton of chop suey.

“Over here,” Carlos said.

They stepped into a narrow elevator labeled STAFF ONLY, and Carlos thumbed the down button on the panel, and they went down.

“How do you know the vaccine’s down here?” Grayson asked. He stared at his reflection in the dull chrome paneling, and decided he looked like someone who had been buried alive in a landfill, and then had dug himself out of the trash and dirt with his bare hands. The elevator smelled of cigarettes and antiseptic, and of the sewers and his own stale sweat.

“This survivor I’d come across a day or so ago,” Carlos said. “George Hamilton, I think? He mentioned it. He was a doctor here, one of the guys who’d worked on it.”

The doors slid open. Grayson stepped into a hallway that reminded him, distinctly, of NEST, built in the same cost-effective, unimaginative mcmansion fashion that, he’d observed, was so endemic to Umbrella’s laboratories. “There’s a laboratory down here,” he said, unsurprised.

“Guess so,” Carlos said, and looked around, at the chrome-paneled walls, the tiled floors, the innocuous pastel paint-job of everything. Even the ubiquitous office ferns made an appearance. “Jesus, the suits really got their hands in everything, don’t they?”

“Umbrella’s owned Raccoon City for years,” Grayson told him. “Not surprising they’d lease space from a hospital. Steady flow of patients, all suffering from all types of diseases and injuries. It’s like an Umbrella scientist’s wet dream.”

Carlos snorted. “You know a lot about that, Harman?”

Grayson shrugged.

They walked down the narrow hallway and went through the only door that was there, at the end of it, and as Grayson had initially predicted, discovered it was, in fact, a small laboratory. Carlos boggled at the instruments and the machines, and Grayson didn’t care about any of it, because he’d seen the cutting-edge of NEST. And he thought about Annette, and how much he loved her, and how her laboratory had been so much better than this shitty chem-kitchen...

“There’s a guy over here,” Carlos said. “UBCS. Bravo team, I think.”

Grayson went over to Carlos. There was something written on the wall, in the man’s blood: _NIKO_. A smudged hand-print streaked toward the ground, where the man had died, face-down, in a pool of his own blood. Someone had shot him; Grayson knew it had been Nikolai, and so did Carlos.

“That motherfucker,” Carlos said.

Grayson didn’t say anything; it was better not to.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” Carlos told him, and they entered the next room.

This room was like Annette’s laboratory—complete with specimen tanks and high-end biotech. Inside the tanks were more of those dinosaur-gorilla things, and Grayson didn’t like that, a thin tube of laminated glass separating him from the monsters. Carlos slung his rifle over his shoulder and started leafing through a manual.

“What’s that?” Grayson asked.

“Instructions on how to work the synthesizer,” Carlos said, without looking up. “Seems pretty similar to the one I’d used.”

“The one you’d used?”

“Before Umbrella scooped me up, I served in a guerrilla force in South America,” Carlos explained. “Learned to mix chemicals and shit. Had this guy with us who was a scientist. We were gonna ransom him; he was kinda a big deal in the local government. He was making drugs for us, bombs—that kinda stuff—so we kept him, and I learned a lot from the guy. Then the government boys showed up, killed him and everyone else, and I wound up in prison.”

“That’s rough.”

“You don’t know nothing ‘bout rough, gringo. Were you a child soldier?”

“No. I was raised alongside the Ashford twins. They treated me well.”

“Yeah?” Carlos scoffed. “You get nice clothes? Expensive toys?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Must’ve been nice,” Carlos said, and walked over to a machine that looked part espresso machine, part centrifuge, part old-fashioned switchboard. He started flipping switches, turning levers and knobs. “Was it nice, gringo?”

Grayson said nothing. He stared at the things in the tanks instead.

“The Ashfords really didn’t treat you like a slave?”

“No,” he said. “They were good to my dad and I. My dad’s sick. Alfred’s been paying for all his medical expenses.”

“What’s wrong with your dad?” Carlos leaned over and looked at some kind of feed on a small CRT monitor.

“Heart cancer. It’s extremely rare,” Grayson said. “Alfred thinks the chemotherapy is exacerbating it, so he’s been exploring experimental treatments. Umbrella’s got some amazing clinical trials going on right now.” He frowned.

“Sorry to hear it,” Carlos said. “How’s your old man doing?”

“Last I heard, not so good.”

“Sorry, man.” Carlos flipped another switch, then took a moment to review the manual. “Change of subject: Jill. How’d that happen?”

“She used to frequent this bar I’d worked at, before I went to the RPD,” Grayon said. “She asked me out. Repeatedly. I turned her down the first few times.”

“Why the hell would you turn a woman like Jill down? You’re lucky, amigo. She’s gorgeous, smart, capable.”

“I was going through some things,” Grayson said, scratching his cheek. His stubble was coming through, thick and coarse. “Wasn’t ready for a relationship.” He didn’t mention Annette; it was something Grayson wanted to tell Jill himself, once she was better.

Carlos took something from the centrifuge part of the synthesizer. “Bingo,” he said, and held up a little phial containing something violently red. “Got the vaccine. Jill’s gonna be okay.”

* * *

“Let me guess,” Alexia interjected. “The Hunter Betas escaped the tanks.”

“Wow, way to ruin the story, Alexia.”

“What’s to ruin? It’s predictable. The whole thing plays out like a B-movie.”

“To be fair, my entire fucking life is a B-movie,” Grayson pointed out, riffling through the pages of _The King’s Game: Strategy and Diligence,_ more precisely the chapter on The Bird’s Opening (also, the book informed him, known as The Dutch Attack, and he imagined a movie of alien Dutchwomen descending from the heavens to wreak havoc on some small 1950s farmtown). “My best friend—you—is a genetically-engineered clone of a woman who died in the early 19th century. And I survived my very own Night of the Living Dead, and its sequel, The Thing: Mutant Boogaloo.”

Alexia smiled. But her smiles weren’t warm things; they were things she’d practiced and committed to motor-memory, a polite reflex. “I have no idea what ‘mutant boogaloo’ means,” she said, through her smiling teeth.

“You. You’re the mutant boogaloo.”

She sighed. “Colloquialisms aren’t my strong suit, but whatever you say, Grayson.” Alexia looked at his book. “Aren’t you finished with that yet? I’d like to get back to our game.”

“Like I said, I made a promise to myself.”

Alexia sighed again, traced the thin, pale line of her eyebrow with her finger. “Is it always going to be like this, Grayson?”

“Like what?”

“Us. Butting heads.”

He turned a page, the paper rustling crisply.

“You can’t hold this against me forever, Grayson.”

“You ‘die’ for fifteen years, and then you suddenly appear again and demand that I pretend everything’s okay. That those fifteen years weren’t spent mourning you.” Grayson looked at her, and her face was unreadable. “Then I move on, and you hold that over my head. Annette’s only been dead for three months, Alexia. You were dead for fifteen years. And now?” He straightened up in his chair and stared across the table at her. “Now I’m not even sure how much of you is human anymore. If you can even be considered human anymore. You know when we kiss, your saliva actually burns me? Burns me, Alexia. Kisses shouldn’t be painful. And when we have sex? It’s actually kinda painful, to be honest. Whatever chemical’s in your body now, it’s not good, and it’s gotten into your, uh… fluids.” Grayson coughed, once, and said, “I don’t wanna have this conversation anymore.”

There was a flicker of something sad in her eyes, and then it was gone. “You’ll simply have to acclimate,” she said haughtily. “Besides,” she continued, watching him with her pale, pale eyes, “you’re not exactly human anymore. You might look it, but on the genetic level? You’re a mutant, too.”

“Can we stop talking about it? Please? The story. Let’s get back to that.”

“Grayson,” Alexia said, and she, right then, sounded hurt, and it caught him by surprise because Alexia rarely ever sounded hurt. She didn’t like to be vulnerable; she’d told him that once, and she’d also told him that was why she didn’t like crying. “Regardless of what’s happened to us, my feelings for you haven’t changed. That’s why this Annette thing has me narky. I don’t care about Jill. But Annette? I shouldn’t feel like I’m in a bloody competition with a dead woman, Grayson.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything.

“What can I do to make amends, Grayson?”

“You wanna help me?”

“I do.”

“When we’re outta here? Help me find Sherry. The Ashfords have connections, right? Alfred—” Grayson stopped, not wanting to think about that right now, because he had enough death on his mind—“mentioned you have cousins in the US government, right?”

“Very distant cousins,” Alexia said.

“It’s a start.”


	34. Unforeseen Complications

The dinosaur-apes had escaped their tanks, and now Carlos and him were running, tearing around the corner, throwing themselves into the elevator. Grayson had caught a claw in his side; warm blood soaked through his shirt, gushing down his side, and he sagged against the wall, smearing blood on the chrome.

The doors closed, and the elevator went up. Carlos, sweating, looked at him and said, "Jesus fuck, they got you good." He looked at the wound, his tanned forehead creasing with concern. Carlos's hair was wet from the sweating, the rain, unkempt and shaggy like a mop-head. Like that, he no longer looked like Antonio Banderas; he looked like a homeless man who, in the right light, could have passed for Antonio Banderas. "Fuck, Harman."

Grayson slid down the wall, trailing blood, his knees drawn up to his chest. And when sitting like that became too uncomfortable, he sat down and stretched his legs. Fat beads of sweat rolled sluggishly down his face, like drops of olive oil or, he imagined, snails, and warm blood seeped through his grimy fingers, cooled to something sticky, glue-like. "I'll be okay," he grunted, wincing, trying and failing to find some relief from the pain. "Just trust me."

"Harman, those fuckers got you real bad," Carlos said. "We're in a hospital. They got meds here. Too many of those claw-monsters, so survivors weren't picking the place clean." He paused. "Kinda tempted to take some stuff, honestly. Know how much I could sell certain prescription painkillers? Lot of money, man."

"We don't have fucking time for that," Grayson said, and, with Carlos's help, stood up. "We need to get back to Jill." The elevator stopped, and the doors opened, gliding along their magnetic tracks. Grayson limped into the room, Carlos behind him. The stink of spoiled Chinese food attacked his nose.

"I was kidding 'bout the meds, man," Carlos said. "Mostly. You sure you're gonna be okay?"

"You'll see," Grayson said, hugging the wall and making his way to the door. "Don't worry about me."

Carlos looked doubtful, but said nothing else, and they went.

They were greeted in the lobby by Nikolai—at gunpoint. He'd stuck a couple of improvised explosives on the pillars holding the ceiling up, and he didn't look pleased at all to have his work interrupted. "Carlos," Nikolai said, by way of greeting. "Admittedly, wasn't expecting you to show up. Caught me by surprise. Almost. Like Tyrell." He was smoking his cheap Russian cigarettes; the acrid smoke stung Grayson's eyes, made them water.

"You killed him," Carlos said.

"State the fucking obvious, please," Nikolai said, rolling his eyes. His scar contorted unpleasantly as he worked his mouth around the filter of his cigarette, which was slightly bent.

"Why, Nikolai?"

Grayson knew. Nikolai was a Monitor, a member of Umbrella's Internal Investigations; but he didn't tell Carlos that. Nikolai was scrubbing evidence, and that was why he wanted to blow the hospital up—to cover up the laboratory underneath it—but Grayson didn't tell Carlos that, either. "Nothing to concern yourself with, Oliveira," he said, and smiled without any warmth at all. "Just a little this and that."

"You gonna shoot me, Nikolai?"

"Not to kill," Nikolai said, and shot Carlos in the knee as nonchalantly as someone who routinely shot people in the knees, and never lost sleep over it. Carlos howled and folded, and he was clutching his bloody knee, gritting his teeth. "Put a splint on it," Nikolai said, and put his gun away. He finished his cigarette and flicked the butt to the ground, and mashed it under the toe of his boot. Then he turned and punched a code into the detonator. "Harman," Nikolai said. "I'll be back for you later. I suggest you run. You have five minutes until—" and Nikolai grinned like a showman, pantomiming an explosion, mouthing _boom_ —"this place is up in smoke. And, ah, you do not look so good, Harman. You should get that wound looked at."

Then Nikolai was gone, and Grayson, still nursing his wounds, was left with a yowling, bleeding Carlos, and less than fives minutes until the hospital went up in flames. He managed to get Carlos up, stumbling toward the automatic doors, Carlos hissing through his teeth and grimacing and wishing, aloud, that the pain would go away. But the pain didn't go away; it only, it seemed, got worse, and Carlos opened his mouth in a silent, white-toothed scream, his eyes screwed shut, and he was yelling what Grayson guessed were several _fucks_ and _shits_ in colorful explosions of Spanish.

"Hold on," Grayson said, and together they limped through the automatic doors, into the rainy streets of Raccoon City which smelled of death and garbage and petrichor, and down the street.

Then Raccoon General rumbled like a beast, and it went up like a flash-fire, tumbling into pieces of concrete, rebar, and glass. They managed to crawl under an aged Toyota pickup, which took the brunt of the damage. Debris rained down like an extinction event, and the Toyota's windshield shattered, the truck dented by huge chunks of concrete.

When it was over, and the smoke had settled, they crawled out from under the truck and limped back to St. Michael's. Though Grayson, stumbling and wishing everything was over, had carried Carlos most of the way.

In St. Michael's, Grayson found a UBCS medical kit, and Carlos cleaned and bandaged his wound as best as he could. The injury had cracked part of his kneecap, or that was what Carlos assumed anyway ("Yeah, pretty sure it cracked my patella. That's basically the 'kneecap', man. I learned some things," Carlos told him, while he was putting his leg in the splint. "I've always been a fast learner"), and Grayson figured Carlos probably knew more about that sort of thing than he did, so he didn't argue.

Grayson's injuries had mostly healed, and Carlos kept asking how that was even possible, but he didn't answer him, because he didn't know how it worked himself. "Maybe I'm just lucky," he said to Carlos, which seemed like a good enough answer. "Maybe it just looked worse than it really was."

They went into the chapel. Once upon a time, St. Michael's had hosted weddings in the chapel, the occasional baptism for Raccoon's more devout citizens; but now there was something funereal about it, like they were attending someone's viewing, waiting for the family and the friends to arrive with their flowers and their Tupperware food, and their polite condolences.

Jill lay on one of the pews, and she looked dead. While Carlos administered the vaccine to Jill in the form of a long hypodermic needle, Grayson waited. He sat in the pews and thought about his father. His father was a Catholic, and he'd often talked about his childhood in Hoboken, how his mother had made him attend church every Sunday, and how he'd hated it at first, but had, over time, resigned to it, and had eventually even started to like it.

His dad's faith had often put him at odds with the twins, with Alexander and Edward, who had viewed religion with the same hostile revulsion that Annette had viewed the video games Sherry played. Grayson remembered, vividly, several nights where his father had gotten into heated arguments with Alexia, who had hated religion, and everything even tangentially related to it.

* * *

"I remember," Alexia interrupted, flicking through the pages of _A Treatise on Empiricism and Reason_ , "one particular night where Scott was waffling on about Jesus, as he often did, and I'd called him stupid." She frowned. "I still regret that."

"You were a snotty kid," Grayson said, and shrugged. He was reading about _The Catalan_ , another mercilessly complex—to him, at least—chess gambit, and becoming increasingly annoyed at himself for struggling to understand the text, and the seemingly and needlessly complicated rules of the game. It was little wonder, he thought, why chess was so popular among intelligent assholes. "We all say things we regret. Do things we regret." He frowned.

"I'm looking forward to seeing Scott again," Alexia told him, and she turned a page in her book.

"He'll be happy to see you, too," Grayson said. "He might even cry."

"Now that Alfred is gone," Alexia said, and she said it so matter-of-factly, so easily, that it would have seemed to anyone else that she'd never cared about Alfred at all, "I'll be taking over Scott's care. I'm going to get him a nurse. Not live-in, as I like my privacy, but someone who will check on him every day. I'll get him the best bloody specialists and doctors—"

"Specialists and doctors who happen to work for Umbrella?" he interjected.

She looked at him, and her stare went through him like a knife. "Who else? My company has the best resources, Grayson. We have access to cutting-edge biotechnology and medicines. And his situation is a delicate one, one which cannot be treated by someone unfamiliar with—"

"One of your viruses put him in this mess," Grayson said. "Umbrella's done enough."

"Nobody could have foreseen this, Grayson."

"So you knew about this?"

"I did."

"And you did nothing?"

"The damage was already done, Grayson. Dr. Wesker injected him with the prototype many years before I was born."

"Project W."

"Precisely. The virus mutated, however, and that was what caused Scott's heart cancer." She put her book down, steepling her fingers. "I'll do everything I can to help him, but I'm not a medical doctor. I'm a virologist, Grayson. But rest assured, Scott will have whatever care he needs, and I will personally see to that."

"Will you be able to keep that promise?" he asked bluntly. "Umbrella's in the courts. The Raccoon Trials. You faked your death for fifteen years, Alexia, and when we get back stateside? You'll have a lot of explaining to do to the feds. And chances are, Spencer's gonna drag you into this shitstorm. I'm betting money now you wind up subpoenaed in the Supreme Court."

"We'll deal with that when the time comes," Alexia said. She smiled meaninglessly, picked up her book and resumed reading.

"Whatever you say, Lex."

"Have some faith, Grayson."


	35. Some Things Left to Do

When Jill finally came around, she wasn't, as he'd expected, happy to see him. "You took off," she said, indignant and visibly sick. "You're a fucking asshole, Grayson. A fucking asshole." The color still hadn't entirely returned to her cheeks, and she looked as if a sufficiently strong gust of wind would knock her over. She sat down on the pew and vomited explosively between her boots. "Shit," she said, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

Carlos didn't say anything. Just sat there in the pews, a certain nervous tension emanating from him. Secondhand embarrassment, Grayson suspected. He was busy stripping his gun, cleaning the parts and putting it back together again.

"I did," Grayson said. "I left." And then he told her about Annette. Told her everything. Jill sat there in silence the whole time, expressionless, an inert animatronic in some amusement park church scene. When he'd finished his confession, he said, "I should have told you sooner. I'm sorry."

Finally, Jill spoke, slowly and precisely. "I should have fucking known," she said, self-flagellant. "I didn't wanna believe it. But you were always on your goddamn phone. Cutting out on me. Making excuses." She scowled at him. "You're a real piece of shit, Grayson. I should have listened to Rebecca, to Chris. They tried to warn me."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry I wasted two fucking years on you, and the whole time, you were banging some Umbrella scientist behind my back. _Helping_ them." She stood up.

"I can wait outside," Carlos chimed, from the back of the pews.

"I'm done," Jill told him, meeting his eyes, and her stare was intense and angry, and something deeper down, at the very bottom of it, that might have been hurt. "I'm finished with you, with your bullshit. I should have called it quits the day you'd abandoned me in Raccoon General, after the Arklay op. That should have told me everything I needed to know. And it did, but I didn't listen."

"Really, I can totally step outside."

"Carlos and I are getting out of Raccoon City, Grayson. You? You're on your own."

Grayson said nothing, because there was nothing he could say. He'd royally fucked up, and he knew that.

"He did help me get into Raccoon General," Carlos said. "Maybe we should at least help him get outta the city?"

"No," Jill said, and she stepped away. "My turn to walk away this time. Good luck, Grayson." And then she left.

"Harman," Carlos said, frowning. "She's just hurt, you know?" He glanced at the door, where Jill had gone, and then looked at him. "Look. I think the Raccoon City Radio tower is still functional. If you can make it there, you should be able to radio for help. There's comms equipment here, but it's dead. I tried contacting headquarters earlier, but got nothing. Just fuzz."

"Maybe I just don't care about getting out anymore," Grayson said, and sat down on the pew, staring at the enormous crucifix on the wall above the altar, smelling dead flowers, and the sweet, heady perfume of countless tourists, forever ingrained in the chapel-wood. "I'm tired of running around."

He heard something outside: a roar, a loud crash, the popping of a gun. _S.T.A.R.S,_ came the familiar growl, and then silence. She'd led the man-thing away, Grayson decided. Outside. Carlos was already running to help Jill, and Grayson went with him, because it felt like the right thing to do.

The S.T.A.R.S monster had smashed a hole through the wall, and in the courtyard, the blades of grass and the pieces of windshield glittered wet in the rain, in the sodium vapors of the park lights. The monster was shirtless now, its rotting cheese torso bristling with intestinal-pink tentacles, like cilia, and weird metal apparatuses and tubes which looked as if they belonged on the underside of a car.

Carlos loped across the yard, rattling off a few shots, and Jill was trying her best to avoid the tentacles, side-stepping and ducking, an intricate dodge-dance she'd practiced countless times before. And though Grayson couldn't be sure, Jill seemed to be moving at a speed which seemed improbable for most humans. He'd heard the term _cat-like reflexes_ before, but had never known an example of that until he'd seen Jill move.

The monster didn't notice him at all; predictably, it was only interested in Jill, and only occasionally shifted its attention to Carlos when he had sufficiently annoyed it. And then Jill and Carlos were running away, and the monster was right on their asses, and Grayson stood there, unsure of what to do. He wasn't a hero; a hero would have run after them, would have saved them from the monster, or had died trying. But if he was going to die, which was likely, he wanted to die as another nameless statistic on some fed's casualty report. Only heroes, he decided, should be remembered after their deaths.

Grayson went back into St. Michael's and sat down in the chapel, and he waited there, and eventually he fell asleep and dreamed of Alexia, and she was a woman in that dream, lying in a casket full of ice, dead. And in that dream, Alexia became Annette, and Annette was dead, too. Except the casket was gone, and Annette lay on the ground instead, and she'd died with her eyes open, glassy and unseeing, like one of Chief Irons' taxidermy projects.

"Harman."

He opened his eyes. A very specific impression of dread lingered, from his dream.

Nikolai stood there. "Get up."

"How'd you find me?"

"Carlos. He tried to call headquarters. I expected to find him, not you."

"Just go, Nikolai."

"The city is going to be destroyed in the morning," Nikolai told him. "They greenlit the sterilization. They're going to drop missiles, Harman."

"Who?"

"The feds. Who else? Come."

Grayson followed Nikolai. A group of USS soldiers were in the lobby of St. Michael's. They were dismantling the UBCS equipment and carrying the pieces out the door. They left the bodies, destroyed non-essential equipment, recovered what was left of the arsenal crates, and loaded them into armored vehicles parked outside. They did this efficiently and quietly; Grayson imagined they must have diagrams in the USS manuals which, in painstaking detail, showed them the routines.

"Mr. Ashford wants you alive," Nikolai told him. "My primary objective is complete. You are the only thing left on the list, Mr. Harman."

"Annette's dead," he said, stupidly.

"I am sorry, Mr. Harman. Truly."

Grayson nodded. He followed Nikolai outside, up a ramp into one of the armored vehicles, and it was small and claustrophobic inside, and smelled of boot-leather. A group of USS guys were inside, and they said nothing to him. One offered him a cigarette, which Grayson accepted. But Nikolai told him not to smoke inside the tank, so he put it away, saving it for later.

Nikolai sat beside him. The ramp creaked up, and the vehicle shuttered. Dim red lights illuminated the interior. "It is a great shame neither of the Birkins survived. Brass isn't happy," he said to him.

"Did Sherry make it out?"

"She did," Nikolai said. "But the US government has taken an interest in her."

"But she was cured of the G-embryo?"

"Yes," Nikolai said. "It would seem so. That was the report HUNK forwarded." The tank rumbled, started bouncing along the streets of Raccoon City, which Grayson could see through slits that served as windows. It was noisy inside the vehicle; it rattled and jounced, and squeaked along on its rubber treads. Zombies wailed and banged uselessly on the sides of the vehicle, and then things crunched under the treads, made the vehicle bounce on its creaking suspension frame.

"Where are we going?"

"To the evac point," Nikolai told him. "We are leaving Raccoon City, Mr. Harman."

Grayson fiddled with the cigarette the USS guy had given him, in his pocket. He found the feel of the filter strangely comforting, familiar. "Before I go back to Alfred," he said, "I have two requests."

"What would those requests be, Mr. Harman?"

"I have something, a photograph, I want to give to a dead friend's wife and their daughter. They live in Arklay City. If you don't trust me, you can send one of your guys with me."

Nikolai worked his mouth in thought, his jaw audibly popping. "The second thing?" he asked.

"I want to see Sherry."

"It's more complicated than that, I'm afraid. The first thing is doable, yes. But Sherry Birkin is of great interest to the American government." Nikolai looked at him. "She will not be easily reached."

"Can't Umbrella pull some strings?"

"After this shit-show? No, Mr. Harman."

More zombies crunched under the vehicle's treads. Cars complained loudly as they were pushed out of the way. Nothing, it seemed, would stop the tank from reaching its destination, and Grayson wondered how differently things could have gone if the RPD had had vehicles like this. How many lives they could have saved if they'd just had some big fucking tanks.

"Do you know anything about Brian Irons?" Grayson asked. "Jill Valentine? Carlos Oliveira?"

"Brian Irons is dead. My men found his body and positively identified it," Nikolai said. "Jill Valentine and Carlos Oliveira were last seen at the disposal plant in the industrial zone. Beyond that? I do not know."

"Leon Kennedy? Ada Wong?"

"Leon Kennedy escaped the city," Nikolai said, scratching his cheek. "On an Umbrella train, no less. He was with Sherry Birkin, and a woman named Claire Redfield. We pulled security feeds from the train and were able to identify them. As for Ada Wong? I do not know this name. But it is likely she is dead."

The vehicle eventually came to a stop.

They made their way down the ramp. Several helicopters, each one black, each one painted with the Umbrella logo, waited for them in the grass, their rotors whirring, kicking up water and blades of grass. They were on the outskirts of Raccoon City, beyond an abandoned military checkpoint, and as Grayson looked at the familiar skyline and knew it would be the last time he would see it, he felt, deep down inside him, something unpleasant and sad, and oddly bittersweet.

A few days after Raccoon City was destroyed by a payload of nuclear-tipped missiles, Grayson was thoroughly cross-examined by the Umbrella Investigation Committee, and when he'd demonstrated he knew nothing of particular interest regarding William Birkin's G-Virus research, was driven to Arklay City by a contingent of USS guys dressed like spooks, in a spook SUV.

He walked up the stairs of a concrete stoop of a pretty brownstone in the affluent part of town, and knocked on the door. A dark-skinned woman, dressed in a red pantsuit, answered the door and asked him who he was. Grayson reached into his pocket and took out the photograph of Marvin and his daughter, and handed it to the woman. "My name's Grayson Harman. He was my FTO in the Raccoon City Police Department," he explained, watching her expression slowly collapse. "I'm sorry. Marvin was a good man."

"I know Raccoon City—but I'd hoped, you know?" She took the photograph and started to cry. "I'd hoped he'd gotten out, and just hadn't had the chance to contact us. Oh, Marvin."

"He saved lives," Grayson said. "He was a hero."

"That was my Marvin. Always putting others before him. That's why—I'm sorry, but I need to make arrangements. I need… I need to go, figure out how I'm going to break this to Keira. She loved her daddy. I'm sorry, Mr. Harman." She closed the door.

Grayson walked back down the steps, to the car, and the Umbrella spooks didn't say a word to him as they drove him to the airport, and he was glad for the silence. He lit the cigarette the USS guy had given him, now stale, and cracked the window.

* * *

Grayson played calculatingly and offensively this time, and Alexia couldn't believe it when he'd checkmated her, and neither could he. _Dumb luck_ , he thought. He'd just gotten lucky. Even so, winning felt good.

"In your face!" he laughed, jumping up from his seat and nearly flipping the table over. "In your goddamn _face_ , Alexia! I beat you at chess! I beat you at chess, you snobby, arrogant, beautiful woman!" Then Grayson kissed her, hungrily and deeply, and her saliva burned his lips.

"Am I interrupting, Dr. Ashford?"

Grayson peeled his mouth off Alexia's, and turned around, slow, like someone had caught him in the middle of a burglary.

Nikolai stood there, dressed in heavy-duty arctic gear, the kind used by the scientists who lived in Antarctica, and the people who climbed Mount Everest. The Umbrella logo was embroidered above his breast-pocket, and on his goggled balaclava. "My men are waiting outside," he said. "You are lucky your algorithmic key worked, Dr. Ashford. These old electronic systems are so unpredictable in this cold."

"You would bloody know about that, you old Soviet," Alexia shot back, but she was smiling.

"It is so strange seeing you like this," Nikolai said, gesturing at her. "Last I saw you, you were a little girl. This big." He held his hand level with his waist. "I never thought you would get so tall."

"I had an impressive growth spurt," Alexia said, and shrugged.

Nikolai laughed his pebbly laugh, and said, "Hurry up and get your arctic gear, Dr. Ashford. You and Mr. Harman. Mr. Spencer is waiting."

"Spencer's here?"

"Not here, no. But he is waiting in his home, in Europe, to hear from you, Dr. Ashford. There is a lot to discuss."


	36. The End - Part 1

It was a long flight back to Rockfort. He’d flown out of Arklay City, to Lima, and from Lima, flew to Rockfort. Rain splattered against his tiny window. A storm was rolling in, and the little plane bounced through the air like a toy, and the Pacific, far below, swelled and churned and frothed in a way which made him think of sickness, of sputum in the lungs.

Alone in the cramped cabin, which smelled of cigarettes and old leather and important people who had come and gone, Grayson ate a ham sandwich and thought about several things. He thought about Raccoon City, about Annette, about the government being interested in Sherry, and why that was. And then Grayson fell asleep, and he dreamed he’d met Annette and Sherry in an airport, in a gray country with gray fields and gray mountains, and they’d boarded a plane and flown somewhere, to start their new life.

Grayson landed in Rockfort that evening. Alfred was waiting for him in the terminal, dressed in a white button-up, white slacks, and a red sports-jacket, and he was flanked by two big guys in fatigues, one Hispanic, the other white. Alfred had a pale face and pale blonde hair, which he’d slicked back with pomade, and he looked kind of like a young David Bowie. But there was something vaguely reptilian in his features too, something which suggested cold-bloodedness.

“Do you know how bloody worried I was?” Alfred barked, making his way over in long, unhurried strides. His two lackeys hung back, still as statues.

“I’m alive,” Grayson said, clutching his bag. The bag contained the clothes he’d bought on the line of credit Alfred had extended to him. “It’s good to see you, Alfred. And I mean that.”

Alfred hugged him. It was a stiff, awkward hug, the sort of hugs which came from people who never hugged anyone. “You bloody wanker, I thought your were dead.” He let go and looked up at Grayson. Alfred wasn’t short, but he wasn’t quite as tall as he was. “When I heard Raccoon City was obliterated, I thought it was over. Thankfully, Nikolai found you. He treated you well, I hope?”

“He treated me just fine,” Grayson said, and smiled. “I’m exhausted, Alfred. If you don’t mind, I’d like to get some rest.”

“Take a few days off before you resume your duties,” Alfred told him, as they walked down the narrow concourse. One of the guards buzzed them through a security gate, then another, and then they were walking up concrete stairs, across wet tarmac, rainy sea-wind licking their cheeks, the lights of the comms-towers glittering like watercolors on the ground.

Alfred dismissed his security escorts—they almost looked relieved to finally be away from this man—and they climbed into a jeep, which Grayson drove, around the perimeter of the prison compound, up a bumpy road into the mountains, through dense jungle. Monkeys hooted and whooped in the darkness, and insects buzzed loudly, annoyingly, and birds of some nocturnal variant warbled in the trees.

The jeep bounced and rocked on its suspension, because the roads here were rough; nobody but Alfred ever came this way. The radio sputtered some kind of satellite-delivered 80s music that might have been _It’s The End of the World_ , but the quality was so dirty that it was hard to tell.

“How bad was Raccoon City?” Alfred asked him.

“Pretty bad,” Grayson said, frowning. He didn’t really want to get into it. “I’ll tell you later.”

The mansion came into view like a picture from a pop-up book. It was built in some nameless Victorian style which sat uneasily between the Addams Family house, and theset of a Hammer Productions film. The front yard was terraced and mostly concrete, and the flower-beds looked ill, some already dead, which didn’t surprise Grayson. Nobody but Alfred and him were allowed near the mansion.

“You can replant the beds,” Alfred said cheerfully, as they walked up a set of weathered concrete steps. “I think I’d like some gardenias and hibiscus. Perhaps jasmine?” He fished his key-ring from the pocket of his sports jacket, and unlocked the front doors of the mansion with a key worked in gold, in the shape of an eagle, its talons curled around a halberd.

The doors creaked open, and they walked into the perfumed foyer of the mansion. Antiques, which Alfred had shipped from his family estate in England, decorated every inch of the room. Cherry wood wainscoted the walls. Several bookcases, most of them containing Alexia’s old books, and glass showcases displaying heirlooms, lined the walls, dusty and neglected. A massive crystal chandelier hung from the coffered ceiling, like a glittering upside-down layer-cake.

“I’m thinking of getting rid of the chandelier for something a little… unconventional. A pet project,” Alfred mused, and they thumped up the staircase, then another. On the third floor, they went through a door, into a carpeted hallway cluttered with antiques and books, and the scowling marble busts of dead Ashfords.

The twins’ bedrooms were up here, and so was Grayson’s old room, which sat opposite of Alexia’s. Rather, he reminded himself, it was a replica of Alexia’s room in Antarctica; Alexia had never lived here. Just like his room wasn’t really his room; it was just a copy.

His room was exactly as he’d left it. The bed was still neatly made. There wasn’t any dust on the furniture, the Persian carpet. His wood-paneled television—the only television in the entire house—sat on its entertainment stand, his collection of video tapes displayed in the glass cabinets.

“Scott kept everything the same,” Alfred told him, standing in his doorway, a tapered silhouette against the sickly glow of incandescent lamps. “And before you ask, he’s fine, but he’s not here. He’s in the United States right now. Convalescing with your family.”

“Hoped I’d get to see him,” Grayson said, and laid his suitcase on his bed. He unlatched it, removed the neatly folded contents and laid them out on the bed. “Does he know I’m alive?”

“Not yet, but he will,” Alfred assured him. “I will personally ring him, Grayson.”

“Hey, Alfred?”

Alfred fiddled with the fat sapphire ring, his family proof, on his finger, and it caught the light, glinting. “Yes?”

“I changed my mind about the USS.”

Alfred nodded, stopped fiddling with the ring. “I understand.”

“Umbrella destroyed my life,” Grayson said, mildly. “I’m only here because of you.”

* * *

Their plane was flying somewhere over the southern Atlantic when Alexia looked at him and said, “You haven’t said a word since take-off, Grayson.”

“He is upset,” Nikolai said, lighting a Russian cigarette, to the dismay of everyone in the cabin, who vocalized their displeasure with grunts and grumbles, and the occasional cough. He grinned, and his teeth looked like iron in the cabin-lighting. “He has been through quite a lot, Dr. Ashford.”

“So he told me,” Alexia said dryly.

“Ah,” Nikolai said, his grin widening, and he looked like the villain from that Bond movie, the one with the metal teeth. “So you know all about Annette Birkin.”

“I do.”

“You,” Nikolai said, and pointed his cigarette at Grayson, “are in deep shit, my friend.”

“I’m not dead yet,” Grayson said.

“Dr. Ashford doesn’t seem like the sort of woman who kills quickly, Mr. Harman.”

Alexia just smiled.

They landed in Europe, in some remote part of it (nobody told him where they were, probably because Spencer had told them not to), and Grayson waited four hours in an opulent sitting room while a Polish maid, who spoke no English, served him tea and cookies, and little cakes and sandwiches.

Alexia appeared. She’d changed into a suit that might have been black, but looked dark violet in certain lighting, and she smelled like expensive perfume.

“I,” she announced, and threw her arms out as if embracing the world, “am the new Chief Researcher at NEST 3, in Arklay City.” Her heels clicked sharply against the floor as she made her way over to him, and she kissed him, suddenly and deeply, and raked her fingers through his dark hair. “Lord Spencer has given us one of his properties,” she told him. “It’s near Arklay City. I would have preferred to return to England, but it seems Umbrella USA needs me more than Umbrella Europe.”

“Of course Umbrella USA needs you more,” Grayson said, and popped another sugary wafer into his mouth. He licked the powder-sugar on his lips, then said, “They’re the ones dealing with the Raccoon Trials.”

“I’ve already been briefed about it,” Alexia told him, and she accepted tea from the maid, sipping. Her lipstick was subtle and pink, but left a smudge on the lip of the porcelain cup. “Umbrella has its legal team on the matter. Should I be subpoenaed, I’ll go from there.”

“What about that thing you promised me? In Antarctica? Sherry.”

Alexia finished her tea. “I’m supposed to have lunch with a distant cousin of mine in Washington, who is very, very curious as to why I’m not dead.” She passed the cup to the maid, who took it, hurrying off. “She’ll put us through to the right people.” Alexia paused, pursed her lips. “Assuming,” she began, “she’s feeling charitable to do her estranged English relative a favor.”

“Who’s this cousin?” he asked.

“Someone very high up the federal ladder,” Alexia told him, and smiled. “Don’t worry your pretty head, Grayson. You know I always keep my promises to you.” She clicked her tongue. “I’m such a soft touch for you. Really, it’s absolutely disgusting.”


	37. The End - End

He waited two hours outside a fancy Washington restaurant while Alexia talked to her estranged cousin, some relative-through-marriage to the Simmons family, an American dynasty from the same primordial cash-pool as the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts. She was some kind of politician, but beyond that, Grayson didn’t know anything about her, and didn’t honestly care.

They flew back to the Arklays ona charter flight, on Umbrella’s dime, out of Thurgood Marshall.

Cold raingusted. Alexia told him they were going to an airport four hours away, so he drove, in silence, in a company car. On the interstate, green aluminum signs announced that they were twenty miles away from Raccoon City. And when they reached Raccoon City—Grayson drove past it—there wasn’t anything left but a crater, and miles upon miles of barbed chain-link which said trespassers would be prosecuted, the land was government property.

Grayson got lost at some point, and pulled into the lot of a Stagla gas station near a town called Pinefield.

“All right,” he said to Alexia, who was busy filing her nails in the passenger seat, “I’m gonna go inside and ask for directions to this airport.” He paused. She didn’t even look up. “You sure you don’t know the goddamn way? You’re the one who told me to drive.”

“I don’t know this bloody area,” Alexia said, and looked at him with her pale, pale eyes. “You’re the local, darling. You were living in Raccoon City, were you not?”

“Thanks, Lex,” he said, and climbed out of the car. Before Grayson shut the door, he asked, “You want anything while I’m in there?”

“Coffee,” she said, automatically.

“You don’t wanna come in?”

“Not a chance, darling.”

He went inside. The middle-aged woman behind the cash register looked bored, and she was busily organizing cigarettes behind the counter. A small box-set television sat in the corner of the store, behind the counter, and played a muted newscast. They were interviewing a Raccoon City survivor.

“Horrible what happened,” the woman remarked, taking a couple packs of cigarettes from a cardboard box and shoving them into the display behind the register. “Can’t even imagine what those poor folks went through. We were lucky. Whatever happened in Raccoon, it ain’t affected us out here in Pinefield.” She looked at him and smiled. “Anyway, what can I do for ya, hun?”

“I need directions,” he told her. “Faraday Airfield?”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “Faraday? Tiny little place. Mostly charter flights, I think, and they gotta pilot school there.” Then she described how to get there, in the way only someone who had lived their whole life in Pinefield, and who would probably die in Pinefield, could. When the woman noticed Grayson didn’t follow, she smiled apologetically, said, “Lemme write that down for ya,” and fed a blank slip of paper from the receipt printer, scribbling the directions with a disposable pen advertising Pinewood Bank. The woman folded the paper into four quarters, then passed it over the counter to him. “Here ya are, hun. If you need a map, you’ll find those in the magazine display by the window.”

He pocketed the directions. “Thanks. Hey, my girlfriend wants coffee. Where can I find that?”

The woman pointed to the little coffee area at the back of the store, near the drink coolers. “Over there, hun. If ya need anythin’ else, you just holler,” and she smiled and went back to sorting cigarettes.

He took the pot off the coffee-maker. It was surprisingly hot, which was good; Alexia wouldn’t bitch about it. He fixed her coffee—Alexia liked hers with cream and sugar, to the point it could barely be considered coffee anymore—and one for himself—black, four teaspoons of sugar—then grabbed an atlas from the magazine display, and went to pay.

The woman had turned up the newscast. A reporter stood in front of a mob of angry protesters. The footage was live from downtown Arklay City, in front of Umbrella USA’s new headquarters.

“Protesters have gathered in front of Umbrella’s newly designated headquarters in Arklay City, three months after the tragedy of Raccoon City,” the man began, in his clean newscaster voice. “Emotions are running high—” and the video cut to a woman shouting through a megaphone, panned across a crowd of sign-toting protesters—“among activists, and families still hurting from the loss of loved ones, with no answers in sight….”

The woman noticed him standing there, and looked deeply embarrassed. She turned the television down and turned to him. “Sorry, hun,” she said, and rang up the coffees and the atlas.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” he said, and paid with a five. “It’s a shit-show.”

“A heckuva circus,” the woman agreed, smiling. “You have a good day now, hun.”

Alexia was fiddling with the radio, and seemed incapable of deciding between shitty 80s pop, which she only wanted to listen to because she found the familiarity comforting in this strange fifteen-years-later world, and the latest hit from Marilyn Manson, which Grayson recognized as _The_ _Dope Show_. “What’s bloody happened to music in the last fifteen years?” she asked.

Grayson climbed into the car and passed her the coffee. “It’s all terrible now.” Heturned the keys in the ignition, then tossed the atlas into her lap. “Here. I need you to make sure we’re going the right way.”

Alexia sipped her coffee, made a face, and put it in the cup-holder. Then leafed through the atlas, which was titled VACATIONER’S GUIDE TO THE ARKLAYS. “Who holidays here?” she asked. “I can think of a dozen better places to spend one’s time.”

“Hikers. Campers. Outdoorsy people,” Grayson offered, and drove with one hand, sipping his coffee with the other. “Everything you’re not.”

“Look at me, Grayson,” she said, flashing a pale wrist that was almost transparent. “I’m clearly an indoors person.”

Rain splattered on his windshield. It was the middle of the day, but the conditions made it feel like nighttime. Cars randomly braked in front of him, went slow, or switched lanes without warning. He cursed. He had this theory that intelligence correlated with the amount of rainfall—the more it rained, the dumber people got.

A guy in a red pickup suddenly cut him off, and Grayson punched his horn. “Fucking asshole!” he shouted.Then, calmer, “I hate this fucking highway.”

Faraday Airfield was one of those tiny, middle-of-nowhere airports where the local farmers could earn a pilot’s license in the slower seasons, and where people who wanted helicopter tours of the Arklays could go to experience the joys of the mountains from a bird’s-eye view, flown by their own farmer-turned-pilot.

A single air-strip cut a neat, surgical line across the December-dead grass, and a small concrete building served as the airport’s terminal, the equally small hangar beside it. Light planes were housed inside the hangar. It didn’t look like Faraday was doing much in the way of business today, probably because of the shitty weather.

“Not exactly the kinda place I envisioned,” Grayson said to Alexia, walking alongside her across the slick parking lot, and the crunchy winter-dead grass. It was still raining, and the wind hit his cheeks like cold, wet needles. He shivered, involuntarily, within the folds of his black Burberry coat. Rain pattered rhythmically on his umbrella, and this close to Alexia, huddled underneath it, he could smell her perfume. “I thought it’d be bigger.”

“My cousin had to pull some strings,” Alexia explained. Like him, she was huddled in her coat, and looked like she wanted to be anywhere but here, someplace warm. “Due to very specific and complicated circumstances, it was best to greet our guest quietly—off the grid, so to speak.” They stopped at the edge of the runway, and Alexia checked her watch, a vintage Rolex on a pale leather strap. “They should be here any minute now.”

Within twenty minutes, a plane was cleared to land. Unlike the planes here, it was a small bizjet, the kind used by business men or government officials to move clandestinely from point to point. When it landed, a young girl was escorted off the aircraft by two spooks in suits and earpieces.

Sherry beamed when she saw him, and ran across the tarmac, hugging him around the middle. She wore a winter jacket and jeans, and a backpack. “Grayson,” she said, and squeezed him tight, “you’re alive.”

Grayson looked at Alexia, whose face, predictably, remained unreadable. “Yeah,” he said to Sherry, and kissed the top of the girl’s head, hugging her tight. “I’m alive. I’m sorry about your mom, Sherry.” He felt as if he’d just realized he was inside a lucid dream, that none of this was real, and it would all go away very soon. But it was real. Sherry didn’t vanish; he didn’t wake up somewhere else, alone, still wondering what had happened to her.

“This is all very touching, really,” Alexia said, her voice cutting into the moment like a knife, “but let’s not dally. I’ve got things to do.”

“You’re Alexia,” Sherry said, looking at her. “Alexia Ashford.”

Alexia smiled. “I see William has told you all about me.”


End file.
